


merewif

by majesdanes



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, a lot less Mermaid Content and a lot more Found Family than your average Mermaid AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-12
Updated: 2017-03-10
Packaged: 2018-09-23 21:50:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9680438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/majesdanes/pseuds/majesdanes
Summary: AndGod, Emma aches at that–at love so freely given it’s accepted as a matter of course. It’s a notion nearly as foreign to her as fairytales, or Regina’s existence, though she supposes these things are one in the same.or: the inevitable man-eating mermaid AU





	1. PART I

**Author's Note:**

> This is much more self-indulgent than I anticipated going into it, but bear with me! Robin does not exist in this universe, although Hook does–kind of. There is some violence and blood (it comes with the territory), but I tried to keep those descriptions vague wherever possible. This should be the first of three parts, but I'll definitely update if that changes!

 

 

But I  
  Have tamed  
      Myself–  
          I have stomped  
On the throat  
      Of my own song

**Vladimir Mayakovsky**

 

 

 

She’d always loved the sea.

Of course, this is hardly Emma’s idea of an _ideal_ visit to the beach–not with her foster mother’s children catching her wrist up in their hands, tugging her in a thousand directions at once. After nearly an hour of frisbee (during which Arianna had flung the disc with too much enthusiasm, leaving Finn with a bleeding mouth and _Emma_ with two separate tantrums to calm, while both parents slept soundly beneath their umbrella) she’d finally managed to escape. Sequestered behind an outcropping of rocks along the shore, knees tucked up to her chin, she’d like to think she’s inconspicuous– _probably._

Besides, their parents had given them fudge pops and that was bound to buy her at _least_ twenty minutes’ peace.

There had been a handful of ice pops left at the bottom of the cooler, and Emma had swiped them before she left; sucking on a creamsicle now, she thinks that the Hendersons aren’t the _worst_ family she’s stayed with. _Definitely_ preferable to the Werners, who would sooner have left her with their elderly neighbors than include her in a vacation to the family beach house.

Shoving the empty wrapper in the pocket of her jean shorts, Emma scrambles down the sheer rock face, dropping with a splash into the water below. It’s quiet here, save for the distant shrieks of beachgoers riding the waves farther down the shore, and she’s reminded that the Hendersons won’t come looking for her for a while. _That_ means an opportunity to leave the shallows behind, wade out to deeper water where their words can’t touch her. And so she swims until there’s no one else in sight, not even the bobbing heads of far-off swimmers; she swims until the shoreline is a distant strip, the Henderson’s pink-spotted umbrella lost among a rainbow array of them.

It happens so quickly she can’t be sure she hadn’t imagined it–just the slightest ripple in the water, as some strange, iridescent body had broken its surface. Her breath hitches in her chest, and she _knows_ she should turn for home–but she finds herself treading water instead, squinting into the sun. Like maybe if she waited long enough, that sleek, gleaming _something_ –some _one_ ?–would show itself again. It takes only a minute for Emma to convince herself she’d been seeing things–a hallucination, she thinks (it _has_ to be), brought on by the heat and her hunger.

She battles sleep in the car on the ride home. With Finn’s head in her lap, and the Hendersons arguing loudly in the front seat, Emma closes her eyes and tells herself that things might change–that maybe there can be something... _more_.

 

* * *

 

Emma had never been one for parties; she’d spent too much of her adolescence bouncing between high schools to connect with the people she met there, let alone befriend them. The memories that remained of the few she’d been to painted a less than flattering picture: Emma guiding drunken strangers to their cars, sweeping hair back from the foreheads of vomiting girls, burying the sting of unbelonging in stolen drinks that burned going down. Still, it’s different here–different if only because she’d put down roots in all the ways she’d failed to do before; there are classes at the local community college, and her work at the nearby beach, and a life that she’d carved for herself: one sturdy enough not to come apart at the slightest provocation, though she’d had a difficult time convincing herself of even that much.

Besides, it’s difficult to reject Mulan, who’d come up behind her wearing a grin so uncharacteristically open and pleading that Emma could read trouble in it from a mile away. It was suspicious enough that Mulan was there in the first place, when her shift had ended over an hour ago–and she’d leaned against the frame of Emma’s guard tower with an ease that seemed too calculated to be genuine. “All of the lifeguards are going,” she’d said, matter-of-fact, like that settled it.

Sighing, Emma had torn her attention from the sea (nearly empty now, so late in the day, with the exception of a few stray beachgoers) to meet Mulan’s eyes. “I would, but you know I’ve got a final paper due this Monday, and a million and one exams to study for before then.”

Mulan had arched a skeptical brow. “A million and one,” she’d echoed, and Emma managed–incredibly–to blush even with cheeks already stained pink from the sun. “Sounds like an excuse to me, Swan.”

“You would know! You're full of them.” If Emma was antisocial, Mulan bordered on hermit-like. Still, it was obvious enough that Mulan–all fidgeting fingers and skittish eyes, so at odds with her usual stoicism–had an ulterior motive. “So, this party,” Emma tried, and she couldn’t help the dry note that colored the words, “Anyone invited who’s not a lifeguard? Like, say–”

Before she could finish, Mulan gave an irritable huff. “Alright, yes. I asked Marian if she was busy, and for once she’s not. She’s a PhD student, Emma–she’s always busy.” It was rare for Mulan to relent so easily, and rarer still for her to pose a request.

Like a final nail in the coffin, she’d added: “I covered for you _twice_ this month,” and Emma had caved. Mulan must have seen the exact moment it happened; she didn’t smile, but her eyes warmed with something halfway between triumph and amusement on Emma’s behalf (“Don’t be so dramatic,” Emma could practically hear her scoff, though she had the good grace not to), and she’d left Emma to spend the rest of the day grumbling to herself as she dashed off the first few pages of her Marine Biology essay in between shifts.

And so she’d found herself on the beach close to sunset, trying not to grimace at the distinct lack of chairs (they’re sitting ranged around the bonfire, and there’s already much more sand in Emma’s shorts and beneath her bathing suit than should reasonably be allowed) or the fact that Killian Jones and his crew of frat boy friends have joined them. Even so, she can’t help but admit that there’s a kind of calm to the proceedings. The bonfire bathes their surroundings in shadow, casting their faces in a bright, flickering glow; the party had died down in the wake of countless six-packs of cheap beer, and the only sounds are the soft wash of the waves lapping against the shore, the static hum of the radio turned down low (playing some Top 100 pop ballad Emma doesn’t care enough to identify), and the occasional playful shriek from Ruby and Belle as they chase each other barefoot through the water.

If she digs her toes into the sand (cool now, without the sun’s rays to heat it) and closes her eyes, lets the breeze play across her face–a balm to her sunburnt cheeks and nose and forehead–she can almost ignore the weight of Killian’s eyes on her, and the expectation apparent in them–or, worse, the thought of that half-finished paper crumpled in a ball at the bottom of her bag. _Right_ , she thinks, exhaling in a frustrated whoosh. _I’ll deal with that–later. Tomorrow, even._

Drawing her sweater more tightly to her, she lets the conversation lull her into a peaceful place somewhere between sleep and waking; Tamara is telling some gruesome folktale, relishing in the reactions of the men, who hide their fear and discomfort behind well-placed snorts of disbelief. “They’re beautiful,” Tamara is saying, “But that’s how they lure stupid men to their graves; then they strip the flesh from their bodies and litter the ocean floor with their bones.”

“Ew, gruesome much?” Ruby emerges with Belle beside her, clutching a stitch in her side. “Jesus.”

But Tamara doesn’t apologize–only flashes a wink. “That’s the story,” she says, with that trademark ease Emma had always envied in her. “I’m just passing it along.”

“I think you’ve all been drinking too much.” Mulan eyes the collection of beer bottles strewn around the fire with a pointedness that’s lost on no one.

“You’ve had a few yourself,” Marian counters discerningly, and Emma allows herself to be swept up in the responding laughter, and in the way that Mulan catches her eye with a sheepish grin. Suddenly–and maybe not all that inexplicably–she’s glad she’d come. She’d never had–whatever this is before: camaraderie, maybe, that shared sense of understanding between so many people, and it isn’t home (the word still lodges bitterly at the back of her throat each time she moves to speak it, too much a reminder of a thousand could-have-beens) but it’s...something.

It shouldn’t surprise Emma that everything goes wrong the instant she feels that ever-present tension begin to ebb. The twilight had only just given way to full night, and the comfortable haze that had hung over all of them for the past few hours is lifting in increments; she can feel Killian twitching for action beside her, having grown bored of talking around a dying fire, and others seem to share the sentiment. He isn’t the first to suggest they commandeer the boat–a tiny dinghy, hardly fit for a sailing on smooth waters in broad daylight, let alone now–but he leaps to his feet at the suggestion, swaying visibly.

Emma knows that they won’t get far and, anyway, she’s not their mother. Still, some strange fear itches at her, and her heart claws its way up her throat at the thought of the boys, drunk and stumbling, paddling out to sea in that cheap piece of plastic. “Guys,” Mulan cuts in, and Emma nearly breathes a sigh of relief at the return of reason. “You really think you’re in any condition to…”

“We’ll be careful,” Lance promises in that smooth, measured voice of his. At that, even Mulan softens slightly–of all the men, Lance is the most composed; if anyone could be counted on to keep the others from making one mistake too many, it would be him. Still, Mulan hedges: “Either way, someone should go with you–”

Marian turns away from her discussion with Tamara to rest a hand on Mulan’s arm, brow furrowed. “Is everything alright?” she asks; there’s awareness in her voice despite the question, and Emma frowns at the thought of Mulan being pulled away to babysit a group of drunk, unruly men with Lance when she’d been looking forward to this night.

It would be easier if she could turn a blind eye–but that damnable part of her that gives too much and too easily rises to the surface, and she folds in an instant. “I’ll go,” she says. And when Mulan and Marian watch her with twin looks of concern, she waves them off with a forced smile and a roll of her eyes. “It’ll be fun, right?”

It takes Emma all of ten minutes to conclude that this outing will not, in fact, be fun–but then, she’d had low expectations on that front since the moment she first decided to tag along. The boys hadn’t taken long to find their second wind; emboldened with their freedom (even if it came on the heels of a decidedly stupid idea, as Mulan had pointed out not once but twice before they’d pushed off from shore), they’d fallen easily into drinking and carousing (insofar as anyone could “carouse” in a boat just big enough to hold the group of them). Lance is the only saving grace, and he keeps Emma’s frustration from getting the better of her by offering a dry, running commentary on their increasingly reckless antics.

And while the other men crow with amusement when Killian’s hand wanders a hair too far, and Emma jabs an elbow into his chest so hard that he doubles over wheezing, Lance’s expression hardens with such obvious anger that the others immediately fall into nervous conversation about something else. Grateful, Emma ignores Killian’s hurried, “Sorry, love,” to flash Lance a grin over her shoulder. But before he can return the gesture, the boat jolts beneath them; it’s such a violent movement, so utterly without warning, that Graham (with his legs hanging over the side of the boat, bare feet just skimming the water) nearly tumbles overboard.

It’s getting colder now, so that even the fleece of Emma’s oversized sweater isn’t enough to ward off the chill–and yet, somehow, that doesn’t feel like the reason for the full-body shiver that runs through her, some sharp ripple all down the length of her spine.

“We must’ve gotten caught on something,” she says, already tentatively scanning the surrounding water. Out of the corner of her eye, she notices that Graham pulls his legs back as though he’d been burned, draws them up to his chest and rests his chin on his knees like a child; he seems stricken, somehow, but she shakes off that sense of foreboding with an irritable shrug of her shoulders. Graham is drunk; that’s the only explanation for the fear laid bare in his face.

But when he finally musters the presence of mind to reply, there’s logic in what he says. “Caught on what?” he snaps, verging on hysterical. “It’s not exactly like we’re in shallow waters!” And, okay–fine, that’s true enough. But God only knows why everyone is turning to eye her as though waiting for an executive order; she’d only come to keep them from taking a late night swim, or making some other, equally misguided decision–she doesn’t know the first thing about sailboats, let alone what to do when one stops in the middle of the fucking ocean. If anything, it should be Killian’s job to set things right; he swells with pride every time someone so much as _mentions_ sailing in front of him, and everyone had heard the (probably embellished) tales of his adventures at sea.

Instead, Killian is watching the water with something so much like horror in his eyes that, even for _him_ , Emma feels a surge of sudden sympathy. “Wh–” she tries, following his line of vision–only to choke on the word, frozen stiff with dawning realization. There’s a sharp intake of breath from someone on her left; she can’t say who, though, can’t do anything but look on as the black expanse of water shudders as though in warning, and something bright as spun gold breaks the surface. It’s a woman, fair-haired and somehow suffused with light, and she isn’t alone; the very air around them seems to breathe a sigh of relief as others emerge, some with coral or bits of shell woven into their hair like ribbon.

One breaks away from the group of them (slow, deliberate, gliding through the water as though she’s part of it) and leans in toward Killian, arms braced against the lip of the boat. “Killian,” Emma starts, but the sound doesn’t come out edged with warning as she’d meant it to, seems somehow muffled instead–and had she even spoken it aloud, or had someone else?

The woman in the water edges closer; her hair is soaked through, a dark sheet that extends far beneath the water, wet strands of it clinging to her cheeks. A drop slips past the ridge of her nose, beads against her lip and catches there, and Emma fights the insane desire to brush it dry with the pad of a thumb; it’s the foolishness of that thought that brings clarity, a pinprick of sense that permeates the miasma of mingling fear-fascination-longing. “Killian,” she repeats, urgent now, “You idiot, don’t–”

The woman raises a slender hand, splays her fingers against Killian’s cheek. “Come,” she murmurs, an invitation ripe with promise. Emma thinks, _No_ , and _Don’t_ , and doesn’t know if it’s out of concern for Killian or envy that he’d been chosen over her. The woman smiles (teeth bared, dangerous) and cups his chin; and then she’s singing in a language Emma can’t decipher, rich and rough and low, taking Killian’s hands in hers and tugging him forward. He obliges without a word, eyes wide as moons, and Emma watches as he slips beneath the water without a sound.

The others converge on their boat the instant Killian falls, until Emma is awash in the music of their voices, their laughter (sharp in passing moments, dissonant in ways that turn her leaden with fear, even as she finds herself inching ever nearer). A hand creeps out of the water, clutches her bare knee so tightly the nails leave marks in her skin–and she sees then that it’s Killian, the sleeve of his sweatshirt sodden through with seawater and something darker; he clutches at her for only a moment before his grip loosens, and Emma realizes (terror crouching like a foreign thing in her chest, making breathing near impossible) that he’d left a red imprint behind. A scream sounds, near enough that it shakes her to hear it ( _Killian_ , she thinks, cut through with a sudden urgency that slips between her fingers the instant she tries to hold to it), and she bounds forward, with no thought clear in her head except that he needs her.

The boat trembles violently with that graceless motion, and the dark-haired woman beside it turns sharply; Emma absorbs the impossibility of her, the sinuous slope of her bare back and the rest of her body bathed in shadow, save for the planes of her face picked out in moonlight–beautifully, incongruously soft. That odd look in her eyes ( _Hunger_ , some urgent voice warns her) flares at the sight of Emma, only to retreat an instant later; her lips part with unmistakable surprise, and then the boat is bowing beneath new weight, and the woman is before her.

Emma wants to ask: _Who are you?_ (What _are you?_ ); she says nothing instead, afraid of what it might mean to break this silence between them. The woman doesn’t speak either, only draws close enough to watch Emma with a furrowed brow–and then, strangely tentative, sweep a lock of hair from her forehead; her touch is solid, anchoring in ways Emma hadn’t expected. Emma ducks her head, tries to ignore the weight and the warmth of that palm against her cheek.

“You would die for that man,” the woman says at last, and her voice is not what Emma had expected–not the warm, enticing cadence of _Come_ , but a derisive scoff, utterly human (and _Of course_ , Emma thinks, _Of course she’s human, what else would she–_ ).

“What–?” Emma steadies herself with a breath, tries (with limited success) to rid her mind of that inexplicable fog. “What the hell are you going to do with him?”

The woman lets her hand fall from Emma’s cheek, leaving something viscous in its wake ( _Blood_ , Emma registers dimly, raising her own hand to swipe at the mark the woman had left,   _It’s blood_ ). “No less than he deserves,” the woman promises (and if it were possible, the words would seem almost dry).

The world seems to tilt on its axis, until Emma is nauseous with it; she doesn’t know when the boat capsizes, or why it happens, only knows that her next breath ushers in a flood of saltwater that stings her nose and throat until she’s choking with it. She feels impossibly heavy, manages only to groan half-formed words as deft hands free her from the prison of her wet sweatshirt; Emma sucks in a breath, coughing on air, and hears a man’s voice raised and broken, hears churning water, hears her own pulse rabbiting desperately in her chest, and then–nothing.

 

* * *

 

Emma wakes to a sky still on the cusp of daybreak, blue-black like a bruise; she makes the mistake of lurching to her feet–or attempting to. In the same instant, pain wrenches through her ankle and she falls back, hissing through clenched teeth.

“You’re alive,” a voice beside her observes, as if in answer to some unspoken question. Emma looks up so quickly her sore neck and shoulders ache with the movement.

It’s the woman, of course–her voice is unmistakable. She’d left Emma nearer to shore (lain down along the sandy floor amidst shells and debris that cut at her bare legs) and retreated to a spot where the water rose to meet her shoulders. Emma might have been distracted by that–by the fact that it’s clear she’s wearing nothing at all, the expanse of skin and collar bone bare above the water–if not for the blood showing in streaks along her cheeks, and gone nearly black beneath the half-moons of her nails.

“Uh,” Emma says, aware that she’s staring and unable to stop. She’s still squinting through the darkness when the woman turns and dives without warning; it’s a sleek, practiced move, and there’s no sound of a splash as she vanishes beneath the water. She’s gone before Emma can so much as tell her to wait. Nothing remains but the flicker of something rosy gold and glinting. But Emma blinks once, dazzled–and opens her eyes to nothing but seawater; hazily, she wonders if she’d imagined it.

She isn’t given very long to ponder. There’s only a moment’s ensuing silence, and then the slap of footsteps against the surf. Someone cries, “Emma!” and she puffs a sigh of relief as Mulan drops to her knees beside her, those features distinct (and comforting in their familiarity) even undercover of darkness. “Where the hell have you been?”

Everything is just slightly blurrier than it should be (either a result of this pounding migraine or the fact that she’d somehow managed to lose both of her contact lenses) and so it’s another minute before the faces of the other people crowding around her come into focus; Killian and Graham aren’t among them but Lance is, and there’s a tightness to his smile that sets her immediately on edge. “I–” Emma shakes her head, tries (mostly in vain) to clear it. “These women surrounded our boat–tipped it over…”

Mulan inhales sharply, impatient, but a look from Lance calms her.  “They know,” he says. “I was able to swim for shore. Went for help as soon as I got back. I tried to get you to come with me, but–you weren’t coherent, Emma, you wouldn’t listen to a word I said. I figured if I could just alert everyone fast enough, then maybe–but then I heard the screaming.” That admirable resolve of his wavers at this, and Emma pales.

“That was Killian, I think,” she tells him hoarsely. “They had..sharp nails. Teeth.” No one dares to ask which “they” she’s referring to. Behind them, Tamara is eying Emma like she’d grown a second head–but there’s something soothing in Marian’s presence, and in her cool, uncompromising gaze, so Emma speaks directly to her over Mulan’s shoulder. “I think...there’s a chance they might still be alive. Listen, whatever those women were...it wasn’t human. But one of them saved me. She brought me here–I saw her.”

“Emma–” Mulan starts, exasperated now; Emma cuts her off before she can do her level best to rationalize that encounter when what Emma had seen tonight defied logic.

“So, they were–what? A couple of skinny dippers hanging out in the middle of the fucking ocean? Y’know, just your average, run-of-the-mill party girls hell-bent on murder?”

No one has any answer for _that_ ; still, none of them seem to see any point in continuing the search party. Instead, they bundle Emma in blankets and usher her into the car, as if worried she might fall apart at the slightest provocation. Or maybe they believe she had already.

It doesn’t matter much, either way–because Emma _knows_ what she’d seen. And those women–those creatures, or _whatever_ they were–had been very, very real.

 

* * *

 

Sleep claims Emma somewhere between the ninth and tenth pages of her essay. A brief nap lengthens into hours spent unconscious, and by the time she’d managed to shake herself free of it, it’s dark again. She scrambles for her cell phone, scrolling through a barrage of missed calls and texts (at least half of them from Mulan) as the fog obscuring her mind begins to clear.

It’s unusual for Emma to wake feeling so heavy, like a lump of clay waiting to be molded. Sometimes it felt as though she’d slept on as many floors and benches as she had beds; she’d learned never to indulge in more than a few hours of rest at a time, and she’d mastered the art of coming awake and fully alert at a moment’s notice. She can’t remember ever feeling so groggy, let alone sleeping for nearly fifteen _hours_ without interruption–and it would be easy enough, to dismiss this almost-coma, and the events of last night as nothing. It would be easy enough to finish her essay, carry on with her life as though nothing of consequence had changed

But her finger hovers over the trackpad, and she can’t resist. There’s a split-second of indecision, and then Emma’s typing a word into the Google search field that she still can’t quite bring herself to say aloud. She’s self-conscious, even knowing that she’s alone–no Mulan to peer over her shoulder and laugh (and really, who could blame her?) at the search results Emma’s rapidly clicking through. No one to remind her (and she knows– _God_ , does she know more than anyone) that this is the stuff of children’s storybooks, not reality. No one to stop her with a word of caution or a steady hand laid against her shoulder when Emma lurches to her feet, tugs on her only sweatshirt (that worn fleece that still smells of seawater and the metallic tang of blood) and bolts for the door.

She walks like a girl who’s got something to hide, but that’s nothing new: head bowed, hands tucked in the broad front-pocket of her sweatshirt, pace unhurried, deceptively casual. Emma is no stranger to the art of going unnoticed. And now more than ever (for all that she tells herself: _It’s stupid. It’s nothing. You’re imagining things._ ), she knows that she has to.  

It’s a still night, and a quiet one; the boardwalk is empty of people, the beach a pale strip. Her battered Keds sink into the sand when she reaches it, plodding determinedly for the shoreline. There’s a boat waiting for her by the pier, a sturdier model than the poor excuse for one that they’d ridden out in the night before. She’s focused on it as she makes her way down the beach (evaluating its size, gauging how many nets it might have stored beneath its floor) but that doesn’t mean she’s not alert.

And so she hears the soft footsteps against the sand long before Marian moves to block her way forward. “I thought you might come back here tonight,” she says, firm in all the ways Emma doesn’t know how to be right now.

Emma stiffens like an animal cornered, tensed to bolt at the slightest sign of conflict–but Marian doesn’t back down, and the easy certainty of her expression never wavers. “You’re going to tell me to go home, aren’t you?” Emma asks, hyperaware of how ridiculous this venture is; she can only imagine what she must look like, bedraggled, feverish, hair rough and tangled from the salt spray of the ocean (and when was the last time she’d _showered_?). But Marian only dips her head, something like the beginnings of a smile playing at the corners of her lips.

“Did I say that?”

Emma shrugs, shifts in place. “Then–what?”

“You’re crazy if you think I would let you do this alone, after what happened last night.” Before Emma can fully absorb this, Marian turns on her heels and starts forward (not away from the sea but toward it, an implicit promise Emma hadn’t dared to expect from this woman she hardly knew) and Emma is forced to scramble to catch up to her. It isn’t until she draws level with Marian that she recognizes the validation inherent in that comment ( _What happened last night_ , she’d said, like the reality of that attack was undeniable), and something in Emma simply gives with the weight of her gratitude.

“You believe me.”

“I believe you,” Marian tells her, patient despite the troubled furrow of her brow, “because I’ve seen them, too.”

“You–what?”

Marian is picking her way through the sand now, approaching the boat Emma had been eying only moments before. “My concentration is folklore Emma,” she calls over her shoulder, voice raised to be heard over the wind that whips her hair back from her face with so much strength. “That isn’t a coincidence.”  

And Emma wonders: _When?_ And _Where?_ But swallows both questions in favor of a flat: “And you want to come with me to find her.”

“Her?” Marian asks, and Emma reddens, because–maybe, conceivably, on some level, she’d been intent on tracking one particular woman more so than the others she’d encountered. She prepares to defend herself (why _shouldn’t_ she want to find the one who’d thought to save her–the same woman, she reminds herself, who’d wound her hands through Killian’s with such warmth in her eyes, only to coax him beneath the surface of the water), but if Marian is suspicious, she doesn’t press the point.

“I want to come with you to make sure that no one else is lost at sea.” She smiles, allows, “If we find what you’re looking for, I guess that would be an added bonus.”

And Emma, somehow, believes her–believes that for some inexplicable reason, Marian is here because she does not want to see her hurt.

“Okay,” Emma exhales, tentative. “Okay, you can come,”–as if there had ever been any question that she would–“on one condition.” Marian raises a skeptical brow (as though to say “And?”) and Emma rushes in with: “Call Mulan and tell her to meet us here...at the very least, I deserve an ‘I told you so’ out of this.”

 

* * *

 

It’s well past two o’clock in the morning by the time that Emma’s resolve begins to weaken–and it’s a mark of how exhausted she must seem that Mulan watches her with sympathy, and not with triumph.

“Maybe– ” she starts, tentative, but Emma cuts her off with a strangled, “ _Don’t_!” The alternative–the version of this adventure that has the three of them stumbling home in the pale light of the early morning, frustrated and empty-handed–isn’t something Emma is willing to consider.

Her heart is pounding now, the beat of it too loud to ignore, and it’s only a reassuring look from Marian that slows its rhythm to a dull, desperate thud. Distracted, she doesn’t notice the way the floor shudders, suddenly, beneath her feet, or that flash of something that just barely breaks the surface of the water, gilded pearlescent in the moonlight. What she _does_ notice is that Marian’s eyes have gone wide with alarm; by the time she’d started toward the prow of the boat, Emma was already jolting into action, scrambling for the thickly woven net the two of them had laid flat for easy accessibility, while Mulan looked on with one brow raised.

She scoops it up in her arms now, and there’s this strange sort of rushing in her ears (“This _can’t_ be happening,” some part of her seems to be saying, or maybe that’s just Mulan, who’d come up behind her, jaw set determinedly despite the shock in her expression). And then Emma is stumbling backwards to avoid the sudden something– _someone_ –thrashing at her feet.

They’d caught–not just one of the women, but _the_ woman. Through the netting, Emma can just make out eyes narrowed with fury, and that nimbus of dark hair, already drying into loose curls in the crisp morning breeze. Of course, Emma is the only one too preoccupied with hair and eyes and snarling mouth to spare a glance for anything else; the others are concerned with far more pressing matters.

“I’ll never doubt you again,” Mulan mutters, and Emma follows her line of vision, down and down until she’s _laughing_ , the sound vaguely hysterical.

“ _God_ ,” she says, “I thought I imagined–but you…you took them, didn’t you? Jones and Humbert, and…” She trails off, flustered, because what did you _say_ when something right out of a fucking _fairytale_ was poised solid, and sure, and _angry_ right before your eyes?

Where legs might have been, there were scales–flecks of gold on gold picked out in moonlight, strange and serpentine. Emma can’t tear her eyes from the sight. But Marian clears her throat, loudly, into a balled fist, and Emma shakes herself free of that familiar fog, thoughts heavy with this woman.

“What exactly do you want from me?” she snaps, falling still at last; she’d thrust a patch of net away from her face, and her grip around the ropes is white-knuckled. Emma nearly feels guilty–and then she remembers why she’d come.

“I just want to know what you did with them.” Her voice emerges sounding more decided than she’d dared hope–a leader’s voice. “Tell us that and we’ll let you go.”

“With who?” At a glance, Emma decides that the woman is bluffing; her eyes are knowing despite the question, and there’s some quality to the set of her mouth that’s almost haughty.

“With the men you ambushed last night.” This from Mulan, who emerges from behind, expression grimmer than Emma had ever seen it.

“Ah,” says the woman, “ _Those_ men.” The taunting smile on her face brings Mulan surging forward, fists balled. Emma throws an arm out quickly enough to restrain her–but it’s a close thing. “Unfortunately, my memory often fails me.”

Emma doesn’t hesitate. “And what can I do to remind you?”

“I’m so glad you asked.” Emma feels certain that the woman must sense weakness in her; her adrenaline had spiked so that her hands shake, buried deep in the pockets of her jeans. But that mocking smile had faded, replaced with an expression of utter seriousness. “If you find a place for me on your land–if you aid me in finding something I’ve lost there...I will answer anything you ask of me.”

“ _No_ ,” Mulan says instantly. Emma and Marian turn toward her–and even the woman looks on with interest, one brow arched delicately.

“No?” she repeats, slow and careful, as though the word were a foreign thing.

“No. Emma, you can’t possibly trust this–this…” Disgruntled, Mulan allows the sentence to trail off into nothingness; none of them, it seems, are ready to state the obvious just yet. “You said yourself they’re vicious; who knows how many murders she’s responsible for. And you’re going to...what? Give her the Emma Swan tutorial on how to be human? Go on some absurd scavenger hunt for God _knows_ what–Not to _mention_ , we have no way to make sure she’ll hold up her end of the bargain in the first place.”

“I keep my word,” the woman interjects, suddenly defiant. Mulan meets this interruption with a look of pronounced distaste. But Emma is transfixed by that look of–of _something_ in the woman’s dark eyes, there one moment and gone the next. It had happened so swiftly, Emma can’t be sure she’d truly seen it. But she’s sure–or, at the very least, she suspects, it had been something resembling _fear_.

“Mulan,” Marian says, calm but far from placating. “This needs to be her decision.”

But Marian meets Emma’s eyes around the barrier of Mulan’s shoulder, and Emma senses she’d already guessed the outcome.

“Fine,” she says at least, voice hard as she can make it. “Whatever. I’ll find–whatever it is you’re looking for. I mean, I’ll try, anyway...I’m not exactly Sherlock Holmes, so no guarantees...but I know my way around a computer, so...” Reddening with the awareness that this woman probably had no _idea_ what she’s talking about, Emma quickly changes tacts. “Anyway, I don’t know how you’re supposed to be following me home, what with the, um, tail?–and all. But…” She’d hardly glanced in its direction, though, when it began to change. In the space of seconds, the scales had begun to meld together–smoothing, softening, separating, until in its place there are legs.

“Well, that works,” Mulan says grudgingly. Emma coughs, promptly averts her eyes, and thrusts her old fleece sweatshirt beneath the woman’s nose.

“Thank you,” the woman says dryly, dangling the damp, blood-flecked, flea-bitten thing from an outstretched hand. “How lovely.”

Emma doesn’t know whether to be awkward or exasperated, and settles for something between the two. “Just–cover yourself, alright? That’s what we–what humans do.”  

“You’re modest creatures. I’m well aware,” the woman murmurs, settling the bedraggled sweatshirt over her torso. She looks up then, meets Emma’s eyes with a kind of impatience. “I’ve walked on land before, you know.”

“Right. Okay,” Emma says, and it makes _sense,_ after all; if skin gone cool and dry beneath the light of the moon and a mere handful of minutes spent on land were all that it took for these women to shed their scales, surely they were free to leave the sea behind whenever they pleased. “And you need me _because…_?”

The woman seems poised to dismiss the question with some cutting remark, but she must remember the promise she’d made earlier; her expression softens, turns considering. “I doubt I could navigate your world without guidance,” she allows, lips pursed, as though the admission brings her no pleasure. “And as I said, I’m in search of something.”

“And the men?” Marian prods.

_The men_ , Emma thinks, _The men–_ Jones and Humbert, and their boat, capsized at sea. She’d lost sight of the reason they’d come, swept up in the shock and the strangeness of it all. “The men,” Emma repeats, as though she’d meant to; something tightens in her chest at the thought, a reminder of precisely what this woman–innocent as she seems now, bare legs bundled in Emma’s sweater, dark hair drying to frame her face in loose waves–is truly capable of.

The woman shrugs, the kind of easy, fluid movement that masks impossible strength. “I killed the dark-haired man myself. I thought you knew it then; you were there. My sisters dispensed with the other. I imagine their bones have been picked clean by now–my people are many things, but wasteful is not one of them.”

Emma’s stomach _lurches_ at the confession–and it doesn’t make _sense_ , this feeling so much like betrayal, that threatens to bring her to her knees. Mulan’s eyes are fierce, Marian’s lips a thin line, but neither seems as surprised. Emma had _been_ there, had seen sharp teeth, nails filed to points fine as knives. “They say your people target only men,” Emma hears, through the fog of her thoughts. _Marian’s voice_ , she registers dimly. “Is that why Emma escaped?”

The woman rolls her eyes, the gesture so thoroughly humanizing Emma is forced to look away. “A lie, concocted by humans,” she replies, dismissive. “Had my people been so selective, we would have starved to extinction long ago.”

“Then _why_?” Emma asks roughly. “Because you didn’t just spare me, you–you carried me to shore.” They’d been miles out to sea; even with the aid of a tail, such a lengthy swim (and one-armed, no less, a body clutched tight in the other) would take hours.

There’s a beat, the woman’s eyes strangely blank. “I would hope you haven’t deluded yourself into thinking me harmless,” she says at length. It isn’t an answer. Emma bites down hard on her lower lip, all too aware of the two pairs of eyes fixed expectantly on her.

“I’m curious,” she says sharply, “but I’m not an _idiot_.” Even as she speaks, she’d begun to kneel beside the woman, drawing a penknife from the pocket of her jeans. The woman recoils, reduced all too suddenly to instinct born of fear–but Emma only brandishes the knife, a show of transparency, and cuts cleanly through the netting. “You might as well tell me your name,” she says, brushing away the remaining fragments until the woman is free, surrounded by the scraps. “I mean, assuming you have one.”

“You still plan to take me with you,” she ventures, eyes following Emma’s movements with a suspicion Emma finds she knows well–it’s a very particular kind, one only ever acquired through years of wariness. “After–”

“The murder confessions,” Mulan suggests, so flatly that it hardly resembles a question.

“Don’t mistake this for forgiveness,” Emma clarifies, darting Mulan a quelling look that has no effect whatsoever. “But I made a promise so–yeah, I’m not gonna break it. And anyway, maybe you’ll do less damage if there’s someone around to keep an eye on you.” She doesn’t say what she’s _really_ thinking–that the brutality and the fear and the unexpected kindness of her had gotten all tangled together in Emma’s head, so that she didn’t know _what_ to think anymore, except that if it wasn’t for this woman, she’d probably have been eaten alive. Literally.

“Regina,” the woman offers, without prompting–and then, at Emma’s arched brow, “My name–the nearest translation of it I can offer.”

“Emma.” She gestures behind her. “Marian. And Mulan, who I wouldn’t suggest crossing anytime soon.” Sighing, she extends a hand; the woman– _Regina_ –eyes it as though gauging whether or not it’s safe to touch. “If you want to be found tottering drunkenly around town, be my guest, otherwise…”

Scowling, Regina takes Emma’s hand in hers, clutching _hard_ as she rises; just as Emma had predicted, she wobbles as soon as her feet make contact with the deck, knees nearly buckling in protest of the sudden weight. “Woah,” Emma says, and thinks of moving to steady her before ultimately deciding she would prefer to remain in one piece. In the moment that Regina regains a precarious grip on her balance, she remembers she’d never let go of Emma’s hand. She’d been squeezing it so tightly Emma had begun to worry it would cut off the circulation–but (again, in the interests of self-preservation) she’d decided not to mention it.

At the realization, Regina flings Emma’s hand roughly aside, only to sway dangerously an instant later. Mulan’s brows disappear into her hairline; Marian grins. “I thought you said you’d walked on land before,” she can’t help but point out. Regina, in a surprising turn of events, seems not to take offense at the comment; she only swallows, says, “That was a long time ago,” voice suddenly hoarse.

Emma decides not to press further.  “Right,” she says instead, “We’ll work on that.”

And _What the_ hell _have I gotten myself into,_ beats out a steady refrain in the back of her mind for the first of what–she’s sure–will be many, many more times.


	2. PART II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw for referenced (canon-compliant) parental abuse

“So, this is your home.” Regina remarks, scanning the apartment from top to bottom the instant Emma flicks on the overhead light. “Well, I can’t say I’m surprised.”

Clothes are strewn along the back of the couch (one she’d picked up at a yard sale a few years back, shit-brown and threadbare), and there’s an open pizza box on the kitchen table. She hadn’t been able to afford cable, but her laptop is hooked up to the television, and the screen–frozen on the Netflix welcome page–bathes the living room in pale light. It isn’t exactly _impressive_ , she knows–but she can’t help but bristle at the implication anyway because, well...what does Regina even have to compare it to?

“I mean, okay, it’s not exactly mermaid palace, but–”

Regina glances up from the thing she’d been examining with interest (a remote control, sans batteries) and turns to glare at Emma. “We don’t live in palaces,” she scoffs, setting the remote down. “Monarchy is a human concept. Our stature is earned, not given.” Emma is on the verge of a retort, but Regina had quieted, suddenly distant, and Emma conquers the urge.  

She refocuses her efforts on rapidly tidying the apartment, shoving the pizza box bodily into the trash and gamely attempting to fold some clothes before tossing them in the laundry basket; Regina looks on with something suspiciously resembling amusement. “So, I’ll take the couch, bed in the next room’s all yours. Bathroom’s on your left. The middle knob is stubborn, sometimes you have to wiggle it to get the water to come out, but–Wait... _can_ you shower?” Her nose wrinkles. “I mean, will you...change back if you try?”  

“That isn’t how it works,” Regina replies, looking bored with the question. “Not unless you expect me to bathe in the ocean.”

“Alright, well...how _does_ it work, then?” she asks. Regina snatches up a cheap plastic snow globe, and gives it a firm shake so that the crystals inside scatter; Emma is beginning to think she’d taken to touching everything just to avoid giving the conversation her full attention.

“The sea calls to you, eventually,” she says, with finality. “And when it does, you listen.”

“That’s it?”

Regina sucks in a sharp breath, nostrils flaring, and Emma thinks, _absurdly_ , that these reactions almost make her annoyance worth incurring. _Almost_. “There isn’t exactly a written handbook for these things,” she snaps–which, Emma concedes, is fair enough.

“And it’s the same for all of you?”

“No,” says Regina stiffly. “Only me.”

“Why–”

“If the interrogation is _quite_ finished,” Regina interrupts, loud to drown out the ensuing question, “I’m exhausted. Assuming that you still intend to make good on our agreement tomorrow, I suggest you sleep as well.”

 _Mermaids,_ Emma thinks, annoyed. They aren’t anywhere near as friendly as Disney would have you believe.

Scowling, she retreats to her bedroom, where she can at least enjoy a few hours of blissful privacy without the stuff of myth and legends criticizing her home decor. A full five minutes pass before she remembers she’d promised her bed to Regina. The smirk on Regina’s face when she emerges, gestures wordlessly to the bedroom, and slumps on the living room couch, stays with her even in sleep.

 

* * *

 

Despite her misgivings, Mulan is over the next morning, bearing IHOP takeout. “It’s like you can read my mind,” Emma gasps, popping the lid on a styrofoam container of chocolate-chip pancakes with a look of ecstasy.

“Yeah, yeah,” Mulan says, giving an exasperated roll of her eyes; it isn’t especially convincing, given that she’s grinning from ear to ear. The smile slips, though, when she adds, “I figured Her Majesty, Daughter of Poseidon probably wouldn’t appreciate burnt Eggo waffles. I’m just trying to save you the headache.” Emma only groans at the comment; it’s hardly noon– _way_ too early to be dealing with scathing reminders of her newly acquired live-in mermaid.

Unfortunately, the resident mermaid in question strides into the kitchen not a moment later; she sails past the table, past Mulan and Emma and their twin looks of incredulity, and comes to a stop at the coffee maker. “Do mermaids drink coffee?” Emma asks, blinking. “Or...know how to _make_ coffee?”

“I told you I’ve walked on land before, have I not?” She had, of course–but the expertise with which Regina is pouring coffee grounds into the filter, measuring water out in practiced increments, must be seen to be believed.

“The woman can hardly walk a straight line, but she brews coffee like an expert,” Mulan mutters, sipping at the technically perfect coffee from her mug with a look of grudging admiration. The former point isn’t _strictly_ true. Either Regina’s long-dormant muscle memory had finally kicked in, or she was simply, infuriatingly good at _everything_ ; at any rate, Emma’s fairly sure the Regina of this morning is more poised and elegant than Emma had ever been in her life. Go figure.

“So,” Regina says briskly, sliding into the vacant seat between them, “On the topic of our deal–” She pauses, for long enough that Emma looks up with mounting alarm. But her eyes are bright, and she exhales with a kind of rapture Emma finds it difficult to look away from. It’s a moment before she realizes it’s the _coffee_ that had made her so euphoric.

“On the topic of our deal…” Emma presses. She’s goading; it’s immature, but she’s quickly coming to find that she has very little self-control where Regina is concerned–or, in any case, less even than usual.

“It’s better than I remembered,” Regina murmurs, and Emma wonders (not for the first time) if Regina even _wants_ to live beneath the sea where, presumably, there isn’t much to do beyond swimming and the occasional hunger-driven murder spree. Obviously, Regina is here with them now because she’d wanted to leave–but Emma had assumed the arrangement was a temporary one–that Regina would retrieve whatever it was she’d lost, and return to the water where she belonged.

Looking at her now (that rare warmth of excitement in a face Emma had largely come to associate with scowls, snarls and otherwise terrifying expressions), she’s no longer sure.

“The deal,” Mulan prompts again, but it’s strangely gentle–or, at the very least, it isn’t as hostile as it could have been. Emma decides to count this as progress.

“Yes,” Regina says, absent at first and then with gaining focus, like someone emerging from a fog. “Of course.” She glances with irritation at Mulan. “I would have preferred to discuss this privately. But I suppose, circumstances being as they may…”

“You wanted me to find something.”  
“I do,” says Regina, leaning back in her chair. “I want you to find my son.”

 

* * *

 

It takes Emma nine days to the hour, but eventually, she does.

His name is Henry Mills, and he’s been living with a woman named Zelena. Regina had assured her that they shared the same last name, but would offer no information beyond that. “ _Really_ ?” Emma had asked, sighing. “ _That’s_ what you’re giving me to go on? Do you know how common a surname like Mills must be?”

She’d been trying to entice Regina into giving some further hint, but Regina had only said smoothly, “Well, then I suppose you’d better get started–I’m sure you have a great deal of leads to sort through.”

The woman was unpredictable to a fault in all aspects but one–she could always be counted on to be _infuriating_.

In the end, it was a stroke of luck that had helped things along–although she has far too much pride to admit _that_ to Regina. Emma had been at Marian’s place (a tiny nook, but a beautiful one–warmly lit with sophisticated decor Emma imagines wouldn’t look out of place in an issue of _Better Homes and Gardens_ ), thumbing through the yellow pages as a pathetic last resort. She’d groaned and buried her face in the book’s stale-smelling pages, until Marian had stroked a soothing hand through her hair and asked “What did you say his name was again?”

“Head of house is Zelena Mills,” she’d said, the words flat and practiced through repetition. “And the kid, Regina’s son–”

“Henry.”

Emma had lifted her head (slowly, because one of the pages had stuck to her cheek, leaving the imprint of newsprint on her skin) and stared.

Incredibly, the two had dated briefly–although how Emma had missed out on _that_ particular bit of information, she can’t begin to imagine. “It didn’t last long,” Marian had told her, almost wryly. “Zelena is–well, I’m sure you’ll see. But the point is that we just weren’t right for each other.” Emma had nearly mentioned Mulan, but stifled the urge. Instead, she’d thanked Marian, and stood up from her chair so quickly it practically toppled over.  

She isn’t sure what she’d been expecting, based on Marian’s remarks about Zelena, and the fact that Regina is– _well_...what she is. But the address Marian had given her leads to a home so picture-perfect that bile rose up in Emma’s throat at the sight of it. It’s far enough outside of Emma’s beachside town that no traces of the ocean can be found for miles around (some part of her can’t help but wonder if this was intentional). The house has a gabled roof, dormer windows and a neatly manicured lawn. There’s a blue bike laid flat in the cement driveway, and Emma realizes that its owner can only be Henry Mills; the thought, for some reason, is strangely surreal.

The woman who answers the door could not look more out of place. She’s all in black, her dress and heels nothing short of elaborate–and the smile she wears is a wicked, teasing thing, more at home on the face of a witch in a fairytale than a suburbanite. Maybe, though, she’d been expecting someone else; the instant her eyes find Emma’s, the smile slips. “And what can I do for you?” she asks, after a beat, sounding for all the world like she couldn’t care less about the answer.

Fortunately, Emma had weathered worse indifference and survived. “I’m looking for Henry Mills,” she says, unfazed. “I’ve been sent by his mother.”

The woman–who can only possibly be Zelena–sighs, dramatically world-weary. “Ah,” she says, “So my darling sister’s returned, has she?”

“Your–what?”

“Sweet little Regina,” Zelena all but sings the words, taking pleasure in Emma’s surprise. “Of course, I told her she’d be better off at sea, but does she listen? I suppose she’s come running back with her head in the clouds, ready to hatch some silly new scheme.” Emma doesn’t bother to say that this description doesn’t sound at _all_ like the Regina she’d come to know; she’s too caught up in the extraordinary impossibility of it all.

“And you’re–?”

“Well, well, aren’t you a _nosy_ one,” she crows, grinning wide. “Yes, _I’m_ human through and through, I’m afraid.” Zelena has a certain air about her, as though she’s forever reveling in some hilarious joke no one else is clever enough to understand. But Emma knows enough to sense when the facade slips, and something like resentment shows through. She’s still smiling as she ushers Emma inside, slips into the seat across from her at the kitchen table, but there’s a bitter edge to it; Emma can see that now.

“Mother dearest did her best to wring the mortality out of me, bless her black heart. She nearly drowned me when i was a child, dunking me in the sea on the off chance I would grow a proper tail and cease to be a disappointment.” She shrugs, as though the memory is inconsequential to her; Emma had never seen a sight less convincing, and something in her chest catches.

“And Regina…”

“Regina,” Zelena repeats, with a smile that only barely masks her disgust, “well, _she_ was nothing short of perfect.” She raises a hand, examines the gaudy green of her nails with forced indifference. “Until she fell in love with a human. That did put a damper on things. But I’m sure dear Regina has told you all _about_ that story by now. The two of you must be close, for her to have sent you here.” Zelena raises a questioning brow.

It’s a challenge; Emma isn’t foolish enough to mistake it for anything less. She pushes aside her chair, stands. “She asked me to bring him to her. Is he here or not?”

“Bring me where?”

They both turn; Zelena’s face shows _true_ surprise, perhaps for the first time since Emma had come. The kid is   sneaky, Emma will give him that much. She’d spent most of her life on alert–had listened for the encroaching footsteps of Foster Mother Number Twelve at a moment when she’d felt sure the _slightest_ infraction would send her back to the group home, had rested her head against the bricked-over wall of an alleyway and strained to hear the bodega owner in hot pursuit, a Pepsi and a bag of chips clutched tight against her chest.

Henry Mills, though, treads with a careful quiet bordering on absurd; in hindsight, she wonders how long he’d been standing there, how much he’d heard with his body wedged behind the door and his ear pressed to the keyhole. After all, Emma knows better than most how easily a child can disappear, under the right circumstances.

Now, he meets their eyes with suspicion, nose wrinkled. The expression is so much like his mother’s, Emma is temporarily thrown.

Zelena takes full advantage. “Nowhere,” she says, shooting Emma a pointed look; the implied message is clear enough: _Leave._

Emma, though, had never been very good at taking orders.

“To your mother.”

The boy’s eyes narrow–but Emma can see that he’s fighting excitement, desperate to keep it at bay for fear that daring to hope will only result in disappointment. She can’t say she blames him–but then, Regina isn’t Foster Mother Number Twelve; she isn’t like any of the temporary parents Emma had known, with their plastic smiles, voices low with a perfunctory kind of sympathy as they’d glanced over their shoulder at her in the car on the way back to the foster home. ( _It’s not your fault, Emma. It just...didn’t work out._ )

Surely she wouldn’t have left him behind, unless there was good reason. And she can see, besides, that he’d been well cared for here, with Zelena. She can tell that from small markers, Henry’s shiny new bicycle on its side, wheels still spinning, Zelena gone hard and defensive at the prospect of losing him.

“My mom,” he repeats, as though he can’t quite believe the words. “She’s here?”

She wants to ask how long it had been since he’d seen her–wants to ask highly personal questions she _knows_ she has no right to: _Where is your father?_ and _Do you_ know _? Do you know what she is?_

These are questions that imply that Emma has some lasting connection to Regina, beyond the contract they’d made. And _that_ isn’t a thought worth entertaining–not when Regina would eventually go her own way (back to the sea, or perhaps with Henry, to explore this world and all it had to offer) and Emma would go back to...well, finishing her thesis, for a start.

The rest would come to her later.

“She’s back,” Emma says, carefully; back from _where_ she doesn’t specify. “And she misses you. I, um–I can tell.” She hadn’t planned on saying _that._ But then, she’d seen the look in Regina’s eyes when she’d still been snared in their net (that unmistakable desperation) and she can’t bring herself to regret it.

At this, Henry raises a brow. “I know,” he says, as though it’s obvious. (And _God_ , Emma aches at that–at love so freely given it’s accepted as a matter of course. It’s a notion nearly as foreign to her as fairytales, or Regina’s existence, though she supposes these things are one in the same.)

“It’s not her fault she has to leave sometimes. I just…” Henry tries to shrug, as though it doesn’t matter. It’s a fruitless gesture; his moods are as transparent as his aunt’s. “I didn’t think it’d be so soon?”

“And will he be returning here tonight?” Zelena says dryly. “Or shall I order dinner for one?”

 _She’s lonely_ , Emma realizes, and the words are out of her mouth before she can stop herself, acknowledge that this is definitely _not_ what Regina had asked her to do: “Wanna come with?”

And Zelena drums her long nails against the tabletop, grins and grins and grins.

 

* * *

 

So, the first words out of Regina’s mouth aren’t _exactly_ grateful.

“You brought _her_ with you?”

She’d made herself at home in the time since Emma had left, dark hair still wet from what could only have been a recent shower. Emma tries not to stare at the sight of her in borrowed pajamas, legs tucked beneath her on the couch beside Mulan, but it’s difficult when she looks so– _Human_ , Emma supplies, with too much force to be genuine. _She just looks very...human. That’s all._

Regina springs to her feet when Zelena sweeps inside, plucking her gloves from her hands with a gleeful smile. “Lovely to see you too, sis.”  

To be fair, Regina doesn’t seem as angry as she’d expected. But there _is_ a sort of wariness to her, around Zelena, as if one wrong move might topple some fragile peace between them as easily as a house built of cards. Still, whatever conflict remains isn’t enough to keep Regina from her primary focus.

“And Henry…” she ventures, tentative now in ways Emma had only ever glimpsed before.

She loses the thread of her thoughts the moment he steps through the door, as if the sight of him had left her numb. She stands, as though rooted to the floor, until Henry presses forward to meet her in the entryway. Emma can see exactly when it is that she folds, blank disbelief giving way to a joy so fierce, and so deeply personal, that Emma is left feeling like an intruder in her own home. Regina pulls him to her, peppers kisses to his head and cheeks and the worried knit of his brow even as Henry ducks his head, squirming with embarrassment.

“Henry,” she breathes, and even Zelena can’t shrug away the light and the warmth of her here, like this. “I’m so sorry. It’s been weeks. I never meant to be away so long.” Each word punctuated by a kiss, a gentle hand run through his hair, his own hand squeezed tightly in hers.

Emma had never felt less present; it’s as if there’s nothing but the two of them, soft eyes and soft smiles. And so she’s caught off guard when Regina turns to her, still kneeling with Henry caught up in her arms, eyes wet. “You found him.”

The words are almost reverent; Emma thinks she might collapse under the weight of them.

“That was our deal,” she says, uncomfortable with praise she’d done nothing to deserve. “I find Henry, and you–”

“Answer your questions.” She’s eying Emma, now, as if she’d never seen anyone quite like her before. “Which I’ve already done. And not to your liking, I’m sure.” The meaning is implicit there; Emma could easily have ejected Regina from her home at any point in the last week, and at no real cost to herself. Hell, she could have thrown her back in the sea the instant she’d confessed to murdering those men–because, as crude and persistent and _insufferable_ as he’d been, Killian was still a _person,_ with a life and a family and…

“You said you’d keep your word,” Emma reminds her, as steadily as she can manage. “And I’ll keep mine.”

Regina smiles, then–a full, ripe smile Emma couldn’t possibly have imagined–and it’s only at Zelena’s chiding that the two break contact. “Yes, yes, that’s all well and good,” she drawls. “But how long will you be staying, Regina? How long _can_ you?”

The question is a dangerously suggestive one–enough so that Henry looks from Regina to her sister and back again with growing suspicion. “How long _are_ you staying, mom?” he asks, and Emma would have thought the quiet resignation in his voice would be enough to make Regina furious at the slip. But she only kneads tired fingers against her temples, swallows back something that isn’t quite a sob.

“I don’t know. I–”

“If I knew _where_ you went when you go away,” Henry presses, wheedling now, “Maybe it wouldn’t be so hard to–”

“ _Henry_ . Please. You can’t ask that of me.” Emma had never seen Regina so close to begging–not even when she’d been tangled up in the sturdy rope of their net, land-bound and surrounded by humans. This is clearly a topic they’ve visited before. “You _know_ that everything I do is for your safety.”

At this, he shrugs out of her grip, leaving Regina to clutch at air; she moves to touch him, then seems to think better of it, and Emma watches as she smooths a lock of hair back from her own forehead instead, eyes terribly, terribly flat. “You always say that,” he mutters, and Regina absorbs the blow like she’d braced herself for it. “But–”

“Henry.” Emma hears herself speak before she realizes she’d made the decision to do so; silence falls, stretching between the group of them just long enough for her to regret intervening. She doesn’t, though–can’t, when Regina is looking like a woman who’d lost _everything._ Like one more show of distrust from Henry might finish her completely.

“Maybe it’s time for us to take you home.” She’s careful to meet Regina’s eyes as she continues, slowly and deliberately, so that there can be no mistaking her intentions. “Your mom isn’t going anywhere soon. She’ll still be here tomorrow, so you can see her then, okay?”

Henry holds her gaze, that brave facade of calm wavering; he watches her for so long that she finds herself struggling to keep her expression clear, as if this boy half her height can see right through her. Finally, he takes a step back, and then another, allowing Zelena to place a hand on each shoulder and spin him around to face the door. It’s as he’s leaving, shoulders defensively hunched, that Emma lurches forward, just a little breathless now. “And the–stuff your mom does, when she’s gone,” she says, the words tumbling out of her in a rush. “Where she goes, all of it–we’re working on it. It’s...complicated, but she’s trying, and we’re gonna figure it out. I promise.”

He offers a nod, hesitant but–reassured, _trusting,_ as Emma had never been herself (had never had the chance to be). When the door falls shut behind them, Regina simply slumps, still kneeling on the floor where he’d been only minutes before.

“Emma…”

In all the days they’d shared a home together, Emma had never once heard her name from Regina’s lips–and certainly not like _this,_ so heavy with emotion ( _Anger_ , Emma thinks, _It must be_.) that Regina seems somehow dazed with it.

“I know,” she says hurriedly, already tripping over her words. “I know it wasn’t my place, I mean–it’s _your_ family, not mine...I get that. I just wanted you to know that you have a place here. For as long as you need it, anyway. I mean...you’re a pain in the ass and you use up all of the coffee filters and never replace them, but–”

“ _Emma_ ,” she says, and the word sounds almost frustrated (enough so that Emma flinches, steels herself against the inevitable) until Regina smiles, slow and strained, as if it had cost her something to manage it–as if that cost were worth it.

“Thank you.”

 

* * *

 

Emma had resolved to arrange for another meeting with Henry, as soon as her school schedule allowed for it. She’d offered to drop Regina off at her sister’s house, but Regina had shot her down almost immediately. “It’s better that I don’t know where he’s been living,” she’d said, and Emma hadn’t pressed the point. Regina is entitled to her secrets, after all.

Of course, what she _hadn’t_ banked on was Henry’s extraordinary talent for finding trouble. _Maybe it’s a family trait_ , she thinks wryly as he emerges from behind a stone column, startling her so much she practically drops her textbooks.

“How in the _hell_ did you find my school?” she asks, before she has the chance to remind herself that he’s, like–ten, and probably shouldn’t be sworn at.

Henry is positively gleeful. “I have my ways,” he says, falling into step beside her.

She can’t help but arch a brow at this. “And those _are_?”

“A magician never reveals his secret,” Henry tells her solemnly. Vaguely, Emma finds herself wondering whether Zelena had encouraged this behavior in him, or if he’d given her just as much trouble. She says as much, but Henry only rolls his eyes, less than impressed with her detective skills.

“Mom was wearing a college sweatshirt last night, and I knew it wasn’t _hers_ because she isn’t in school, so it had to be yours.” He shrugs, unable to contain his triumphant grin. “Plus your school schedule was hanging on the wall. I do have _eyes_ , you know.” Emma opens her mouth, then promptly closes it again.

“Kid–” she starts, a little weakly, but he cuts her off with that sharp, squinting look that she’s come to associate with an impending interrogation.

“Why _was_ Mom wearing your clothes, anyway?”

Emma’s cheeks warm at this–solely because there is no answer she can give that doesn’t involve exposing Regina’s best kept secret. And definitely _not_ because the thought of Regina in her sweatshirt and striped pajama shorts is–well, _something_.

“You come all the way here just to ask me that?” she asks, in lieu of an answer. From the look Henry gives her, it’s clear he’s classified her attempt at derailing the conversation as pathetic at best, and suspect at worst. Graciously, though, he allows the deflection.

“ _Come on_ ,” Henry sighs, exasperated. “You _know_ why I came here.” He points an accusing finger. “ _You_ know why she always leaves!”

“Kid, we literally just met. I’m giving her a place to stay, that’s all.”

Henry gives her The Look–the one that says he isn’t buying it. “She likes you, though,” he says, with an air of finality. “I can tell.”

She knows, on some level, that it would be safer not to entertain this conversation. Except–the kid is smart ( _much_ smarter than she’d been at his age, she’s sure) and he’s looking at her with the wary expectation of someone who’s tired of condescension and half-truths. “I only know part of it,” she says, cautious now. She’s stacking a very precarious row of dominoes; even the slightest misstep will knock everything down. “How much _do_ you know, exactly?”

Henry watches for any signs that Emma is humoring him, leading him into a trap of some kind; still, the opportunity to really _talk_ about what he knows is too great to pass up. He seems the type to dwell and overanalyze, and she imagines that he’d run over the few facts he had thousands of times, alone in his bedroom at Zelena’s. “I know that it has something to do with my grandma.”

“Your grandma?” Emma echoes, taken by surprise.

“Yeah. I don’t think Mom likes her much. And Aunt Zelena _totally_ hates her.” Emma recalls her brief conversation with Zelena at the Mills’ home, remembers the story of Zelena’s birth. She’d thought Zelena had exaggerated, spurred on by her resentment of Regina; after all, the admission had come so easily, and without prompting, a horror story disguised as a casual anecdote. But really–there’s no evidence to suggest she’d been _lying_.

“She started leaving a few years ago,” he says, thinking back. “Dad died when I was really little, and it was just me and her for a while. But then Aunt Zelena came and took me to stay with her.” His brow furrows. “She’d go away for weeks, and then she’d call and Aunt Zelena would take me to see her, at a hotel or a cabin or something. And then Aunt Zelena would come pick me up, and Mom would go away again.” As much as he tries to keep it at bay, the hurt and the anger resurfaces. “I don’t blame her. I just want to know where she _goes_. And she won’t tell me, and she keeps leaving–”

“Henry,” Emma interrupts, because she can’t bear to hear anymore. “Like I said, I don’t know that much about your mom’s...situation. But I know...” And it’s so _stupid_ , that she’d grown so defensive of this woman–when she hardly knows Regina, had only _just_ met Henry last night. “I know it kills her to leave you, kid.”

“I know,” he says dully. “Once she promised to come to our band recital at my school, but she missed it. When I told her, she just started crying. It wasn’t even a big deal, you know? She just...She promised she would be there.” He trails off, strangely helpless. “And she’s always so scared when she has to leave. Like she doesn’t want to go but she doesn’t really have a choice.”

“You’re not doing this because you miss her,” Emma murmurs, gentling with the realization. “It’s because you’re worried.”

She’d known Henry was clever beyond his years–but she’d never known a child this _selfless_. Or even an adult, for that matter.

“Aren’t you?” he asks, giving her a meaningful look.

 _Yes,_ Emma thinks, _Terrified._ And then, bleakly, an instant later: _God, am I screwed._

 

* * *

 

She doesn’t think Regina would be too pleased with the thought of Henry roaming around unattended. But Henry, always one step of her, had cautioned that escorting him home would only alert Zelena that he’d left. The news would inevitably get back to Regina, and “hasn’t she worried enough already?”

“Touché,” she’d sighed, and warned him to shoot her a text the _second_ he was safe inside.

At that point, she _should_ have turned toward home. Homework had begun to pile up in the week or so since Regina had come into her life, and she needs to make headway on it if she has any intention of passing her classes. Not to mention Mulan had refused to call out of work to “baby-sit the mermaid” which meant that Regina had spent the day alone in Emma’s apartment, doing God _knows_ what.

Instead, though, she finds herself carving out a path to the water. She shucks off her shoes as she goes, the cool of the sand a balm against the pads of her feet and toes. Socks and sneakers dangling from her hands, jeans rolled up past her calves, she waits, letting the surf wash over her. The seawater is ice-cold, and her feet prickle with it until she’s forced to step back. She tears her eyes from the black expanse of sky overhead; that’s when Emma sees her.

“Don’t worry,” Regina says, snider than Emma had heard her in days. “I haven’t eaten any men alive, if that’s what you’re wondering.” She’d sunk down to her shoulders in the water. In the dark, it’s nearly impossible to see, but Emma thinks she can just detect the place where hips and waist and skin meet something else entirely. How long she’d been here, floating listlessly in the shallows, Emma doesn’t know– _hopefully_ no more than a few hours, though; she kind of doubts Regina’s ability to go unnoticed by humans in full daylight.

“It’s not.”

Regina raises expressionless eyes to meet hers, and Emma decides on the spot that she can’t just _leave–_ that she doesn’t want to, either. Sucking in a breath, she wades into the water until it skims her knees. And she’s trying to be stoic–she really, _really_ is–but she can’t help the full-body shiver that runs through her at the sudden cold.

“There’s no need to freeze on my account,” Regina says, giving a pointed roll of the eyes for good measure. The effect is somewhat lost, though, in the hoarseness of her voice, the red rims of her eyes.

“No big deal.” Emma wraps her arms around her chest, grips tight, as though to ward off the chill. “Been colder.”

“I see.” Regina looks like she doesn’t know whether to be grateful or annoyed; she settles for some nebulous emotion between the two, and there’s a note of concern beneath that caustic edge when she adds, “Your teeth are chattering.”

“Regina–” She starts, but breaks off at the realization that she has nothing to say–not _yet_ , anyway, not when it’s obvious Regina has been holding something back. There’s a beat, the expectation an unspoken presence between them, and then–

“I wouldn’t think you’d want to be near me like this.”

“Honestly,” Emma admits, embarrassed at the realization, “I hardly noticed.”

Regina examines Emma’s face, eyes fixed on her with eerie precision given the darkness of the night; whatever it is she’d found there– _truth_ , maybe–only seems to anger her more. “This isn’t a game, _Emma._ Have you forgotten, that I murdered your friend in front of you?”

“He isn’t–he wasn’t my _friend–_ ” Emma mutters, and Regina snorts, disbelieving.

“Do you think I want to be– _trapped_ here? Like this? Do you think I enjoy being separated from my son?” She’d drawn closer, so that her dark hair nearly brushes Emma’s cheeks, their mouths a breath apart, and Emma is aware of nothing but the pulse jackrabbiting in her wrist, and Regina, Regina, _Regina_. Regina, breathing sharply, lips quirked in a hard, mocking smile (the kind that must hurt to wear, as much as it hurts to _see_ ), a finger pressed to Emma’s chest like an accusation or a caress or some of both.

That haze returns–a soft, all-consuming fog that steals over Emma gradually, until her vision swims with it; Regina is little more than a blur, beautiful and furious and frightened.

Regina pulls back, then, and the feeling lifts just as quickly as it had descended upon her. That strange electricity in Regina had gone; in its wake, there is only the face of a woman, worn and weary.  “I could kill you,” she says, almost tiredly.

Emma tastes the metallic tang of blood in her mouth; she’d bitten her lower lip just hard enough for it to bead there. It’s a shallow mark, a pinprick; even still, she wonders if Regina can smell it on her, like a shark. Marian would know.  

“You could have killed me when we met,” she points out. “But you didn’t. And the thing is? I don’t think you want to.” Regina purses her lips at this, but she doesn’t deign to argue the point, and Emma decides to count this as a victory–until one minute passes, and then ten, and neither of them has dared to fill the silence. Regina darts another look in Emma’s direction, as though a sharp enough glare might drive her back to shore.

 _That_ –of course–is not an option, and Emma scrambles for something to say. There’s a beat, and then: “Henry came to see me today.” She really hadn’t meant to broach the subject with Regina; she hardly needed reminding that her son was impatient with her–that he wouldn’t rest until he’d learned what it was that kept her from him. Still, Regina raises her head, regards Emma warily.

“He was hoping I might know something, about–where you go,” she presses on, determined to finish now that she’d begun. “I didn’t tell him anything, obviously. Not that I know much, really, except for–you know, the obvious…” She gestures to the scaled tail–flicking irritably to and fro beneath the water–with a feeble grin.

Regina raises a brow. “And you’d like to,” she supplies. Which, well–of course she’s _curious;_ anyone in her position would be. But she wouldn’t be the one to force Regina to relive something so traumatic. Emma had always been an expert in dodging probing questions, meeting any mention of her own past with dismissive jokes and shows of forced indifference; given that, she could hardly expect Regina to be candid now.

Before she can put this into words, Regina begins to speak. “My people are capable of assuming human form; they need only leave the water to grow legs. When the sea is absent of people to feed on, we walk on land, and lure them in with our song.” Emma nearly asks _how_ , but memories of their first meeting make the question die on her lips; when Regina had trained dark eyes on Killian and begun to sing, Emma had all but come apart. It must have been child’s play, she thinks, convincing men to wade past the shore and into the ocean alongside her; under Regina’s spell, Emma would have followed her anywhere.

“One winter, I was forced to come ashore; there were no sailors, and the beaches were empty. I’d learned to integrate, and so I left the ocean behind, to hunt in town. And I–” Regina’s practiced, steady pace falters. “I met someone. We fell in love.”

Zelena had said the same, when they first met, and the pieces fall neatly into place now.

“His name was Daniel. He was–as mortal as any one man could possibly be,” she says, and it’s almost wistful, this side of Regina. “We bought a ranch together, miles from the sea. I was naive–carried away with my own cleverness, and I...I believed that we were safe. If I hadn’t, I would never have adopted Henry.”

“Why would it matter to your people–that you’d left them behind?” Emma asks, because she can see, now, where this story is headed, and she doesn’t _understand_.

“It didn’t,” says Regina flatly. “But it mattered to Mother.”

Emma remembers Zelena’s story, Henry’s vague recollections of his grandmother, and feels sick with foreboding; she’s no longer certain she deserves access to this story–one so private even Regina’s own son had not been privy to it. But Regina seems determined to finish what she’d started.

“Henry and I would spend Sundays together; it was a ritual, of sorts, just between the two of us. We would have pancakes at the diner, and go to the movies, or the arcade–never the beach, of course.” She smiles thinly. “I came home one Sunday to find Daniel lying in the hallway. Mother had slit his throat.” She looks to Emma, perhaps expecting to find an expression of horror–but Emma is blank, and utterly silent. “The door was ajar, and all of the lights were on–but Daniel should still have been at work, and I...I knew, before I saw him. I told Henry to wait outside. If I hadn’t, he might have seen...his father–”

“Mother never knew Henry existed. She assumed I’d run away to be with Daniel...I don’t think it occurred to her, to investigate further. His death was all the invitation I needed to return to the sea. And once I had, she was quick to enact the curse–to limit my time on land, strengthen the call of the sea so that I could no longer ignore it.”

“Why not take Henry and run?” Emma ventures. “A different state–different country....somewhere she couldn’t find you.” At this, Regina laughs mirthlessly.

“Don’t you see? Mother _always_ finds me. I underestimated her once, and my husband suffered for it.” There’s that same steel in her voice, but beneath it–exhaustion; _fear_ . “I’m sure his death was painful. Mother would have taunted Daniel, belittled him; if he died wishing he’d never married me, I couldn’t blame him for that.” She pinches the bridge of her nose. “I should never have _had_ a husband; I should never have had a son. It was...foolish, and–God, it was selfish. I can never forgive myself for Daniel’s death–” And here, Emma rushes to interrupt, but Regina seems unable to bear reassurances of her innocence. “I can never forgive myself for Daniel’s death,” she repeats, firmly. “But if Mother were to find Henry, I would stop living.”

Her eyes are wet, though she stares stubbornly ahead, and Emma can’t keep from finding Regina’s hand beneath the water, squeezing until she’s numb with it. So much remains unsaid between them, and still Emma can think of no reply. “Come on,” she says instead, gentle, and guides Regina toward the shore.

Moments after they leave the water, Regina’s legs begin to reform, until she’s toppling forward with the sudden weight of them. Emma knows enough to catch her this time, arms outstretched–and Regina, though she reddens, doesn’t so much as scoff.

Emma, though, leaps away the instant she remembers Regina is barely clothed. Regina smiles faintly at her embarrassment; still, she accepts Emma’s windbreaker without comment, and even concedes to lean on Emma in the minute it takes to regain her balance. Heart in her throat, Emma stands straight as a pillar until the moment passes.

“You won’t tell him, will you?” Regina asks, as they start toward home. She’d been distracted before, clutching the jacket to her body with mild surprise, as though the frailty of human bodies never failed to astound her. Now, though, she eyes Emma with apprehension.

“No,” says Emma, simply. “Although I wouldn’t be surprised if the kid figured it out for himself, eventually. He’s _definitely_ too smart for his own good.”


	3. PART III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings for some descriptions of minor injuries/blood. Other than that, this is (for the most part) ultra cheesy and soft, which I will own up to gladly because it was 100% catharsis writing for this awful show. This is the last chapter, so thank you for sticking with me these past few weeks!

They find a rhythm, after that–shared breakfasts and late-night movies, quiet afternoons bent over her thesis as Regina burns through recent literature with her legs propped up on the threadbare couch. Mulan grumbles when Regina cheats at Scrabble, and Marian smiles in that way that only she can, as if she’s privy to some secret the rest of them can’t fathom. Henry joins them often, to insist on marathons of  _ Star Wars _ , or midnight runs to fast food restaurants, and Emma quickly learns that Regina is helpless where Henry is concerned, incapable of denying even his most absurd requests. She catches Regina one Friday night, watching Henry shovel greasy fries into his mouth with such love it hurts to look at her. 

Emma, for her part, can’t conceive of being so precious to someone. She understands, though–when it's Henry. 

After weeks of this–comfort and ease, and Regina warming by degrees–she wakes one morning, with her head cushioned against her keyboard, and whoops with joy when she remembers the night before. By some miracle, she’d finished her thesis, down to its carefully cited bibliography. Regina must hear, because she prods the door open (never one for knocking, as Emma had grown fond of reminding her), and leans over Emma’s shoulder, skimming the open document. “Does this mean you’re finished spending every weekend hunched over your laptop?” she asks, arching a brow. 

“We’ve done stuff!” Emma says, outraged. “Just last night, we got food–”

“Going through the McDonald’s drive-through  _ hardly _ counts as a night out.” Regina’s tone had never been dryer, and–in her indignation–Emma nearly misses the meaning implicit there.  _ Nearly _ .

“So you–what? You want to...go out?” And she could kick herself, for phrasing it like  _ that _ . But Regina seems thoroughly unfazed. 

“I’ve lived with you for months, and I have yet to actually  _ see _ this town.” It’s true, of course; what had begun as a brief offer of shelter had culminated in Emma replacing the discount sofa with a pull-out bed, resigned to sleeping in the living room indefinitely. Henry had even constructed a blanket fort atop it (aided by Emma, and a reluctant Regina–although she’d laughed quite a bit throughout the process, for someone supposedly so unwilling) in an effort to make the living space–in Henry’s words–more “homey”.

Truthfully, Emma would have gladly slept on the floor if it meant that Regina (and, by extension–Henry) could continue to stay with her–but she wasn’t about to say  _ that,  _ no matter how knowing Marian’s looks had become. 

Of course, Marian’s visits were rooted in more than just amusement at Emma’s expense; somehow, she had earned Regina’s trust, and with it, knowledge of Cora. From that point on, she would come to Emma’s on a daily basis, arms laden with musty-smelling books, which she would proceed to comb through well into the night. Only so many more weeks remained until Regina’s absence would begin to arouse suspicion–and even now, the pull to return to the ocean seems to strengthen in her with each passing day. On more nights than one, Emma had woken to found Regina half-asleep, drifting toward the door like a woman itching to escape, trapped in her own skin. Marian had gathered, from what little she knew, that time was of the essence–and though she’d found nothing, she's insisted on continuing her research, stubbornly convinced that a solution lies somewhere within the pages of her schoolbooks. 

_ Months  _ of Marian and Mulan, and Henry and  _ Regina _ ; endless days and nights spent in one another’s company, until tentative gestures had given way to familiarity, and familiarity to warmth–and it had never once occurred to Emma that Regina saw her as anything more than a landlord. 

Too taken aback to hide her surprise, Emma says, “I can show you around. Today, even, if you want,” and cringes at her stupidity, her obvious eagerness. 

“Good,” says Regina, briskly. “The day is still young.” She’s smiling, despite her business-like proposal–and that smile only widens at Emma’s look of surprise. Without a word, she flings open a nearby drawer, tosses Emma her bathing suit, and sails out of the room. 

Emma watches her go, the bathing suit still strewn across her lap, eyes wide, and smiles back until she aches with it.  

 

* * *

 

Regina hadn’t been to the beach since their last discussion there; she hadn’t felt safe, and Emma could hardly blame her for that. Perhaps she’s feeling reckless now, or simply hopeful, but they lay their towels in the sand at her suggestion. (They don’t, of course, venture into the water).

It’s Regina, too, who catches Emma’s hands up in hers and tugs her toward the volleyball nets (“Why the hesitation? Afraid you’ll lose, Emma?” she’d said, smooth as ever, and Emma had rolled her eyes, and ducked her head to hide the tint of color in her cheeks at the unexpected contact). 

Emma doesn’t allow herself to feel disappointment when they’re joined first by Belle and Ruby, and then Tamara; this isn’t a  _ date _ , after all–just an innocent outing. Even if Ruby asks, “Who’s your  _ friend _ ?” with a sly smile, and Tamara tosses a scathing look Emma’s way when she bumbles her way through a reply. Fortunately, none of them know her as Killian’s murderer–although they may well end up loathing her for a different reason entirely: she’s a  _ brutal _ volleyball opponent. 

By their fourth match, the others had drifted off, tossing Regina wary backward glances as they went. Regina is barefoot, flushed from the heat; her dark hair is speckled with sand, curling in the humidity, and Emma thinks that she’d never seen Regina such a mess. 

It’s difficult, she finds, to look away. 

“Are you tired yet?” Emma groans, lowering herself–very gingerly–to the ground.  

Regina looks distinctly as though she’s struggling to suppress a smile. “Not in the slightest.” 

“Go figure,” Emma grumbles; still, she obediently extends her hands, so that Regina can pull her to her feet. 

Dusk is falling as they reach the boardwalk, sandals swinging from their hands. Regina had tried to shake off some of the sand in one of the outdoor showers, and her hair is still damp from it. The sundress she’d borrowed from Marian is soaked through in spots, but it’s a warm night, a sure sign of summer nearing. In any case, she’s better dressed than Emma, who had forgone clothes entirely, and was forced to buy an oversized t-shirt from one of the souvenir shops. 

The boardwalk comes alive with the darkening sky, all neon lights and carnival games. She drags Regina into a dimly lit arcade, only to empty her wallet attempting to coax tickets from a skeeball machine. “Like you can do any better,” she huffs, feeling around in her pockets for spare change. 

“Oh, move  _ over _ ,” Regina sighs, snatching the ball from Emma’s hands; in an instant, tickets stream out of the dispenser, coiling in tight spirals at their feet. “I told you Henry and I spent our Sundays at the arcade,” she says, sounding so triumphant that Emma’s frustration simply evaporates. She’d never seen Regina quite like this–not smiling, but  _ beaming _ , face aglow; it’s enough to make her heart turn over in her chest. 

Mulan brings Henry to meet them at an ice-cream parlor next door. He grins when they slide into the booth across from him, sunburned and caked with sand. “What have you two been  _ doing _ ?” he asks, eying them with something that might pass for suspicion, if not for his obvious amusement. 

“A magician never reveals her secrets,” Emma says sagely, reaching across the table to ruffle his hair. 

“ _ Ugh _ ,” says Henry, but he’s still grinning as he digs into his sundae, excavating for hidden mounds of cookie dough.

Emma’s sweet tooth easily rivals even Henry’s, and she’s done with her ice cream before the others had begun to eat. She’s mourning the scraped-clean bottom of her bowl when Regina leans over to brush a thumb along her bottom lip; she's practically in Emma's lap, their faces closer than they’d been since their shared night at sea, and Emma can’t manage more than some wordless sound of confusion. “You had chocolate on your lip,” Regina murmurs, flushing with the realization that she could easily have just  _ told _ Emma this in the first place. 

Quickly, she pulls away. Emma tries not to focus on the sudden loss of her. “Uh–thank you,” she says, studiously ignoring the  _ look _ Mulan and Henry are exchanging in the booth across from them. 

The moment passes, eventually–though it seems, to Emma, more like hours than seconds–and the others fall into easy conversation. When Henry leaves for the restroom, Mulan confides in a hushed whisper that Marian had elected to stay home to follow a recent lead. “She’s been saying that every night for weeks, though,” she adds, with a roll of the eyes for good measure. 

“So,” says Emma, seizing on the change in topic with enthusiasm, “You’ve been seeing Marian every night?” She waggles her brows in a way that makes Regina and Mulan scoff in unison. 

“You’re impossible,” Mulan snaps, but she doesn’t deny it–and the color in her cheeks and the downward cast of her eyes only confirm what Mulan hasn’t said. 

Henry soon bolts for the door, buoyed by the promise of cheap carnival food and the chance to win a stuffed bear twice his size, and Mulan follows with a long-suffering shrug. In their absence, the booth they share seems suddenly cramped; there’s precious little space between them, and Emma is much, _much_  too aware of the way that Regina’s hand rests just beside her thigh. As casually as possible, she edges to the side, smiling innocently when Regina turns to catch her eye. 

She finds herself casting about for something to say– _ anything _ to defuse this new tension between them. “I know I promised to show you around,” she says eventually, “But we, um–never even left the boardwalk, huh?” 

“No, we didn’t,” Regina agrees, but there’s a softness to her eyes that suggests she isn’t bothered by the oversight. 

“I guess all of this must seem kind of shitty, compared with what you’re used to.”

“No,” Regina says, still soft. “Not at all.” Emma hadn’t been very subtle about her curiosity, and Regina must  _ know _ that she’s longing to hear more; she’d never shared memories of her home before now, but Emma senses that tonight is somehow different. Sure enough, Regina sets down her spoon–pauses, clears her throat, and then: “I do miss it, sometimes–maybe more than sometimes. It’s very beautiful there–not as colorful as your movies like to pretend,” she adds pointedly, and Emma grins; she’d forced Regina to watch  _ The Little Mermaid _ , though she hadn’t seemed very impressed. “But beautiful, in its own way. And...quiet.  _ You _ would stick out like a sore thumb.”

“Thanks,” says Emma dryly, but it’s difficult to be angry when Regina is looking at her like–well, like  _ that _ . Emma might have called the expression fond...if she hadn’t known better. Which she does–obviously.

“There isn’t much time for...social activity. Your lives are consumed by thoughts of the hunt–and the throne, in my case. Mother wouldn’t rest until I agreed to inherit.” Regina pauses, peeved, when Emma begins to laugh with stunned disbelief.  

“Of course,” she breathes, wiping tears from her eyes as Regina glares. “Of  _ course _ you would be royalty.” 

“Of a sort,” Regina sighs, impatient. “My  _ point  _ is that I was never encouraged to seek pleasure for myself–none of us were. In the eyes of my people, mortal men are hedonists. I suppose it was essential, that we hardened our hearts to them; we thrived on their deaths.” 

“I never knew it then, but we were...incapable, I think–of loving. When I return to the ocean, I feel  _ cold _ . It’s like being drenched in ice water, from the inside out. Everything seems distant.” 

“And Henry…?”

“I can cling to him,” Regina says, eyes falling shut, “But it’s difficult. Our minds are more bestial beneath the water, more–simple. We’re easily distracted, by treasure, or by...prey. Mother must know that. She feels my attachment to humanity makes me dangerous. A threat.” Regina bites out a bitter laugh. “I’m sure she’s right.”

“I won’t let her near you anymore.” 

The words come out before she can stop them, sharp and forceful. They’d left the ice cream parlor, the bell overhead chiming as the door falls shut behind them, and the world is cast in shadow again. Though the boardwalk still buzzes with conversation, it falls like white noise on Emma’s ears; instead, Regina’s laughter demands every ounce of her attention. 

“ _ Emma _ ,” Regina says, eyes alight. She’s leaning up against the ice cream parlor’s side-wall, chin tipped up to meet Emma’s eyes. And though she hadn’t stopped laughing, there’s a kind of solemnity to her, too, as if she senses that Emma is serious. “You’re no match for my mother.” 

“Then we face her together.” She’s all too aware of how foolish she must sound, to Regina–how  _ young _ . But it’s important, suddenly, that Regina  _ knows _ : “I’m just–I’m not going anywhere, okay? Whatever comes next, I…” She lets the sentiment taper off, get swallowed up by the low thrum of the carnival music, the shrieks of excitement from the nearby ring toss booth. Because what if Regina doesn’t  _ want _ this? What if she’d overstepped somewhere along the way, insinuated herself into the lives of yet another family that wasn’t hers to claim? 

“I–shit, I’m sorry.” Regina’s eyes still follow her, dark and heavy with some emotion Emma can’t place, and she’s seized by the long-ingrained desire to turn on her heel and  _ run _ .

“Sorry,” Regina echoes, brow furrowed. “For wanting to protect me.” Her voice has the same, low, rich quality it had had when they first met, and Emma is reminded of that night–of Regina’s palm splayed against her face, the oddly bewitching quality of her song. 

She’s so swept up in the memory she nearly fails to catch Regina pressing forward, leaning up to tuck a lock of hair behind Emma’s ear, as she hadn’t in months. “I was just thinking,” Emma ventures, striving for a calm she doesn’t feel, “Of that night–”

“Mmm...when I murdered your boyfriend?” Regina asks, hand still lingering. 

“ _ Not _ my boyfriend,” Emma says, disgruntled, and then forges valiantly ahead. “When you saved my life, Regina.” The question there is apparent, though she doesn’t voice it aloud, and the taunting smile fades. Regina draws back, then, turns considering; Emma tries not to wilt under her close examination, all wrinkled nose and narrowed eyes. She thinks, instead, of how like Henry’s the expression is. 

“I don’t  _ know _ why,” Regina murmurs, strangely tentative. “I suppose I...well, I didn’t want you to die.” 

“How romantic,” Emma says, wryly. It’s a moment before she realizes the implications of what she’d said; when she does, she wishes that the ground would swallow her. But Regina only flashes a self-deprecating grin, and says quietly, “I told you none of this comes easily to me.” 

_ None of what? _ she wants to ask, but then Regina hooks a thumb under Emma’s jaw and tilts her chin forward, and her mind empties of all thought. For all their earlier tension, this is  _ easy _ in ways Emma hadn’t dared to imagine. She winds a hand around Regina’s back, fingers meeting the thin straps of Marian’s weather-worn sun dress, and Regina rises up to meet her lips. 

Her smile only broadens as the skies open and rain pours down, drenching them both in an instant. Unhurried, she presses kisses to Emma’s jaw, laughing when lipstick prints bloom in her wake. Only when their hair is sticking to their cheeks does Regina allow herself to be drawn back, under the relative safety of the awning, where Emma kisses her up against the wall until she’s breathless with it. “It’s been–ah, ages since I’ve been kissed,” Regina says, on a sigh, hands coming to rest light against Emma’s waist. 

“What,” says Emma, smiling as she smooths wet hair back from Regina’s forehead, “No kissing in the lost city of Atlantis?” 

“No,” Regina growls, though there’s no venom in it. “And shut  _ up _ .” 

“Whatever you say, your  _ majesty _ –” but Regina exhales impatiently, and surges forward to press a kiss to Emma’s lips, and then another, rough and persistent, so that the words are all but lost between them. Regina grows strangely desperate, then, lips and tongues and teeth, until Emma’s bottom lip is swollen, the space between them charged. “Regina,” Emma says, in an undertone. “ _ Regina _ .”

They pull apart, Regina running a thumb along her lips in silent wonderment; they’re kiss-bruised, lipstick smeared at the corners, and she’s so beautiful that Emma wants nothing more than to kiss her again. But there’s a wildness in Regina’s eyes that stops her. “Are you okay?”  

“I…” Regina swallows back whatever she’d been about to say. She manages a smile, though it sits wrong on her face. “Emma, I’m sorry, this–this was a mistake. I shouldn’t have…

And, well–she should have expected  _ that _ . So, why does it still feel as if the ground had fallen out from under her? 

“Right,” Emma says blankly. 

Regina winces. “It’s not what you’re thinking,” she promises, and moves to brush knuckles along Emma’s jaw with a look of such tenderness that Emma nearly allows it. Instead, she dodges the gesture, and Regina absorbs the blow with wide, startled eyes. “ _ Emma _ ,” she presses, hand dropping limply to her side, “It’s not that I don’t _ want _ –” 

Emma eyes Regina warily. “You don’t need to defend yourself.” She tries to inject some semblance of understanding into her voice, though she thinks she must have fallen short of the mark; it’s difficult to tell when she feels so far outside herself, empty and resigned. She’d heard these words before–knew them by heart, like the lines of a play committed to memory.

Some things, she’d come to learn, never really changed.

“It’s fine,” she lies. “My home is still yours, if you need–”

“No, I–I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” Regina says, quickly, like she’s ripping off a band-aid. Emma had never heard her like this before, tripping over her words with something like fear. “I’m sorry.” 

She glances backward as she goes, once and then twice, mouth set in a worried line. Emma blinks, and just like that–she’s gone. 

 

* * *

 

Emma is drenched by the time she slips inside. Zelena and Marian sit across from one another at the kitchen table, heads bent low over the books spread across its surface. They glance up when the door swings open, watching Emma wring out her shirt with twin looks of bemusement. 

“Well, well. Don’t you look...colorful?” Zelena purrs, taking in the bedraggled state of Emma’s appearance with barely concealed amusement. 

Marian elbows her  _ hard  _ across the table. While Zelena is still recovering, her expression nothing short of mutinous, Marian turns to Emma. “Where have you  _ been _ all night?” she asks, teetering on the edge of her seat with some newfound discovery. “We’ve figured it out!” 

“Figured  _ what _ out?” Emma asks, uncomfortably aware of how grouchy she must sound to the two of them. 

“ _ This _ ,” Marian says, thrusting an open book into Emma’s outstretched hands.  

Emma skims the text, head swimming with the pages of academic jargon, because, God, she thought she’d  _ finished _ with all of this when she sent in the final draft of her thesis. And then: “ _ Oh _ .” 

“Exactly.” Emma returns the book to Marian, who accepts it with a look of supreme satisfaction. “Where’s Regina? She needs to see this.” 

Emma falters, then, unsure of where to begin. Because the truth is that she has no  _ idea _ where Regina might be; she’d said she would be moving out, and Emma had assumed she would come by to pack her things. She’d waited in a nearby diner for two hours, nursing a cold mug of coffee, just to avoid meeting Regina here; it hadn’t seemed like a good idea for the two of them to be in such close quarters. Not after whatever– _ that _ had been. 

But her things are still scattered throughout Emma’s apartment, untouched.  _ Which doesn’t make sense,  _ Emma thinks, frustrated. No matter where Regina planned to move, she would need at least the bare essentials; it isn't as if she has a job, or any money to replace what she’d left behind. Unless…

“I’m an idiot,” Emma breathes, eyes wide. 

“I’m sure that’s true,” Zelena agrees, leaning languidly back in her seat, “But why?” 

Ignoring her, Emma snatches the book up a second time, scanning the bookmarked page with urgency now. “So, how does this work?” she asks. “I mean, it’s not much of a spell. It just calls for–”

“The blood of a siren’s victim.” 

Emma exhales. “Right. Okay–That’s…” It’s difficult to focus; the thought of Regina in danger is more a distraction than a call to arms, and Emma can’t tear her mind from it. Killian, she knows, had long since been buried–and besides, she doubts she’d have been able to siphon blood from his body in good conscience; even the thought makes her shudder. She can feel Marian’s eyes on her, watching as she paces restlessly back and forth; it’s maddening. “ _ What _ ?” she says, when the pressure becomes too palpable to ignore. 

Marian is obviously hesitant to suggest whatever idea she’d conjured up–but Emma doesn’t have the luxury of  _ waiting _ . “Marian, if you have an idea, I’m going to need you to spill it sooner rather than later, okay?” she says, falling suddenly still, halfway through her fifth lap around the kitchen. “Because if I’m right, Regina is on her way back to her mother because I was  _ stupid _ enough to let her go, and–”

“Emma,” Marian interrupts–and she’s still tentative, but there’s a steeliness to her now, as if the knowledge that Regina is in danger had strengthened her resolve. “Weren’t  _ you _ under Regina’s spell, too? I know she didn’t hurt you, but–”

_ More than once,  _ Emma thinks, almost wryly, remembering treading water out at sea that night, Regina desperate and furious and close enough to kiss. 

“ _ Emma _ ?” Marian repeats, more urgently now–but Emma is already crossing the room with purposeful strides. She’d just flung open the nearest drawer, rifling through the silverware for  _ anything _ sharper than a butter knife, when there’s the barely-audible creak of a door sliding forward, and the crisp click of the lock as it falls shut. Emma freezes in place, mind working furiously; exhausted and sick with fear as she is, it’s a moment before the reality of the situation sets in. 

“Henry,” she says hoarsely. The knife slips from her grasp, meeting the ground with a resonant clang. “He must have heard us.” She remembers when she’d met him at Zelena’s house–how impressed she’d been with his subtlety, that damnable ability to pass along walls and down corridors with the eerie silence of a ghost. He must have been standing outside the kitchen all this time, listening with his ear to the wall. But… “I thought he was with Mulan–” 

Zelena is no longer smiling. “She dropped him here,” she says, horror-stricken. “He said he was going to bed.” 

“ _ Bed _ ,” Emma repeats, with a grim laugh. “Jesus, I bet he never even bothered to change out of his clothes.”  There’s no use in being angry with either of them; Zelena might have functioned as his guardian these past few years, but lately, Henry had been with Regina more often than not, and–with  _ her _ . If she’d come straight home instead of skulking around all that time,  _ terrified _ to share the same space with Regina, none of this would’ve happened. 

“ _ Fuck _ ,” she breathes. “Okay–okay. Someone get me a container or a Ziploc bag or... _ something _ , okay?” Without pausing to so much as grit her teeth in preparation, she swipes the knife up off the floor, splays her fingers wide, and cuts a neat line down her palm; blood streams from the gash immediately, an angry red line reaching diagonally from wrist to index finger. 

“Here.” Marian slides a small, plastic takeout container across the counter, and Emma snatches it.

“How much is enough?” she demands, already squeezing her injured hand over the opening. 

“Enough to coat the knife,” says Marian flatly, watching as the container swiftly fills to the brim.

Henry has a head start of a few minutes, but his short legs can only take him so far. Sprinting with more urgency than she ever had before, Emma rounds a corner on shaking leg, just in time to catch sight of him up ahead. The rain is coming down more fiercely than ever, in translucent sheets that mottle Emma’s sense of direction. The road is slick with water, the flood line rising high enough to lap against Emma’s ankles, and she’s left with the sense that this storm is prophetic in some way, vehement cleansing at the hands of a vengeful god. 

Emma kicks off her shoes when the wooden planks of the boardwalk give way to sand; soaked-through and numb, she forces herself toward Henry, a minute figure silhouetted against the roiling sea. He comes to a stop before she reaches him, rearing back as if he’d been burned, and Emma slows despite herself, gripped with sudden horror. 

Regina had dropped to her knees before him, sweeping him into her arms with an anguish that is clear in every line of her body, even at such a distance. She still wears Marian’s sundress, though the material is drenched through; her long, dark hair had come free of its braid, and the wind whips it forward so that Emma can’t catch a glimpse of her face. Drawing inexorably nearer, Emma watches as Regina smooths the hair gently back from Henry’s face; she moves to press her forehead to his, as if breathing him in, or perhaps convincing herself that he is still whole. 

They, of course, are not alone.

“I see,” comes a new voice, measured and soft. “So  _ this _ is what’s been drawing you back to land?”

“Mother…” Regina’s voice is strained. She had yet to move from Henry’s side; in fact, she only holds him more tightly now, as though worried an especially fierce wind might whisk him away. 

“I don’t know why I didn’t see it sooner.” Until now, the figure had been striding along the shore, just far enough from the sea that the water could not reach her bare feet. Now, though, she pauses, considering. “I rather doubted that milquetoast husband of yours was worth settling  _ here _ for. But a child–well, darling I know better than anyone the value in  _ that _ .” 

Emma had known her fair share of awful parents; she’d lived through more than most, after all, though few had been with her for longer than a handful of odd months. Most had wounded Emma only with their absence; many, like a child with a week-old toy, had simply grown tired of her presence. This, though, is different;  _ Cora _ is different. Emma had never known a mother to be so calculating, or so malicious–and Cora, she knows, is both of these things, regardless of the warmth in her voice; there’s a note of mocking buried beneath all of this, besides, like a sign of things to come. 

“What was it you called him?” Cora asks, as if the question were one born of innocent curiosity. “Henry?” Regina gives a mute shake of her head, but the woman ignores her, smiling now. “Henry,” she says, “It was selfish of your mother, to keep you from your family–but no more of that. Come here.” And, like a marionette jerked forward on strings, Henry rises, shaking off his mother’s hold. Emma is startled by his utter willingness, the easy certainty with which he charges forward, eyes oddly out of focus. Regina had been capable of inducing a trance state in her victims;  _ that  _ Emma remembers well–but never such tight control, never anything like  _ this _ .  

Emma had never understood Regina’s fear of her mother so intimately before now; how did you fight a woman who would taint your mind with false loyalty at the slightest show of rebellion? No wonder she’d hidden Henry from him–until tonight, when Emma had brought all those years of careful protection crashing down. 

Even as Henry tugs against her grip, Regina holds tightly to his hand, anchoring him. Cora appraises her calmly, as if she and her daughter are immersed in a game of chess, and she’s simply trying to discern Regina’s next move; Emma is left with the distinct impression that this is typical of an interaction between them, and her chest tightens at the thought. It’s galling, being forced to stand here helplessly as this all unfolds, her rage mounting by the second.

As if some invisible rope tethering him in place had snapped, Henry thrusts away his mother’s hand and starts forward again, stumbling ahead through the sand. “ _ Stop _ !” Regina shouts, too frightened to be angry. At the sight of Henry moving beyond her reach, she’d scrambled to her feet. She stands not far from Emma now, shoulders hunched against the storm. And she looks, somehow, less human than Emma had ever seen her. In her fury, she is larger than life, despite her bare feet, the tendrils of wet hair clinging to her face.

She commands attention. 

“Mother, let him go.” Regina swallows, watches as the energy that radiates from Cora seems suddenly to dull; Henry halts abruptly, and the sight seems to steady her. “Let him go, and I’ll never leave the sea again.”

There’s a moment’s silence, and then–slowly–Cora softens, smiles. “Very well,” she says briskly. “I’m not unreasonable. I’ve only ever wanted the best for you, Regina.” 

Regina had hardly taken a step, when Emma bursts frantically from hiding, her careful plan forgotten. “NO!” she cries, voice hoarse with shouting. “REGINA!” Without thinking, she stumbles through the still-soaked sand, buffeted by wind and rain, until she’d come nearly face to face with Regina. 

“And who have we here?” Cora asks, as one might greet an unexpected visitor to a garden party. This proves too much for Regina, who whirls around to snap, “Stay  _ out _ of this, Emma,” through gritted teeth. 

“Dear, if you have no intentions of introducing me to your friend,” says Cora, choosing her words with care, “Perhaps it’s best we go. We have so much catching up to do, after all.” 

_ You’re a monster,  _ Emma thinks, though she refrains from saying so. She could not allow her temper to guide her–there would be only one chance to set things right.

“We were only saying goodbye,” Regina replies, voice hard; no sooner had she turned to leave than Emma grabbed her by the wrist and tugged her back. 

“Look,” she says, the words emerging in a whispered torrent, “I know you don’t want anything to do with me and I  _ get  _ that, but I can’t let you and Henry be separated like this–” 

“ _ Emma _ ,” Regina sighs, sounding–to Emma’s surprise–almost frustrated. “You think I  _ wanted _ you out of my life?” She snorts, and though she’d bowed her head against a savage gust of wind, Emma thinks she glimpses a sardonic smile. “ _ Idiot _ .”

“Well– _ what _ ?” 

Hurried now, Regina casts a glance over her shoulder, as if to reassure herself that Cora had not yet materialized behind them. “My mother ruins everything she touches. I knew if I ever dared to make a permanent home with Henry, she would find us, and destroy it. But I realized tonight that all this time I’ve been protecting Henry...I was leading her straight to you.” Emma moves to speak, but Regina hushes her with a raised hand, determined to speak her piece before they’re parted. “I’ve endangered you and your friends, and anyone in contact with me. And I–Emma, what if I came home and it was  _ your _ body that was waiting for me?” 

“ _ Regina– _ ”

“If you tell me that’s a chance you’d be willing to take, I might have to slap you,” Regina says, and though she rolls her eyes, she manages a watery smile, too. “God knows I’d have kissed you sooner if I could have.” 

Emma laughs at this–a choked, half-sob of a laugh that catches in her throat. She kisses Regina, then, and tastes saltwater on her lips–seawater or tears, or some of both. Regina responds with a certainty Emma had never imagined possible only moments ago; she winds her arms around Emma’s waist and draws her in, kisses back with a ferocity bordering on desperation. “You don’t–have to go with her–” Emma tries, the words swallowed up by another kiss. Regina isn’t trembling as she pulls away, and though her eyes are red-rimmed and her cheeks tearstained, she's no long crying; this strengthening of her resolve is, in Emma’s eyes, somehow worse. 

She dips her head, leans her forehead heavily against Emma’s–and even as Emma tangles one hand in Regina’s hair, the other drops to her side. Seemingly idle, she grabs for Regina’s hand, and presses something against her open palm. She meets Regina’s eyes, as they widen, but offers no explanation. 

With difficulty, Emma tears herself away, watching as Regina–still silent, and newly uncertain–turns to go.  She walks past Emma, toward Henry, still frozen mid-movement; here, she pauses to kneel beside him, kissing his forehead, his cheeks. “Come, Regina,” Cora urges, and she does–without hesitation, without complaint. 

Cora folds Regina into a hug with something approaching genuine happiness; it disturbs Emma–more, perhaps, than anything else she had seen so far. Regina bears the embrace with stiff-backed resignation–that is, until Henry emerges from his stupor, and bolts forward, shouting for Regina as he goes. 

Emma grabs him by both shoulders and pulls him back. He writhes and kicks and claws to escape her grip, prodding the still-fresh wound on her palm so that she hisses in pain, but her hold on him never falters. “ _ Emma _ ,” he cries, still trying desperately to fight his way free of her, “She’s going to take my mom away, you can’t let her! Emma!” He’s teary-eyed, and Emma feels like a monster for holding him there. “Why are you  _ doing _ this? Don’t you love her too?”

“ _ Henry _ ,” she pleads, holding him tightly to her chest, “ _ Please _ . I need you to trust me, okay?”

“You knew,” is his only reply. He stills, at last, watching with blank eyes as Cora settles a hand on Regina’s shoulder, a triumphant mark of ownership.

“I did,” she says quietly, “And I’m sorry. But–it wasn’t my place to tell you, Henry...you know that.”

“I guess,” he mumbles, distracted now. With a flourish, Cora had turned toward the sea–but though she’d strode several paces forward, Regina remains motionless, something clutched against her side in a white-knuckled grip. 

The fall of rain had slowed to a steady drizzle; in this newfound silence, every sound seems strangely amplified.

“ _ Come _ , Regina,” Cora repeats, agitated now. “Surely we’ve both waited long enough?” Cora holds her head high, regarding Regina warily as she approaches. 

Her eyes widen when Regina pauses before her, leans forward to grasp her hand and squeezes it,  _ hard _ .  “We have,” she agrees, and presses a kiss to her mother’s cheek, as she had Henry’s only moments before. Cora’s hand drifts upwards, until it comes to fall against that same spot on her cheek. 

“Regina–” she says sharply, her furrowed brow only deepening as Regina releases her hand, and steps away. Regina draws her hand back, and Emma catches sight of something glinting there, bright as a warning beacon. “Put that away, you  _ foolish _ girl,” Cora snarls, sudden realization bleeding all of the warmth from her tone in an instant. 

“Goodbye mother,” Regina says, and plunges Emma’s knife into Cora’s chest, right down to the hilt.  

Cora crumples with a look of disbelief, and Regina moves with her, catching her as she falls. The knife, of course, is of no consequence in itself; the poison of Emma’s blood, though, works swiftly, and by the time Henry had burst from Emma’s grip, run down to the shore and caught Regina up in his arms, Cora had already fallen still. 

Dawn had long since come and gone, and the sky is pale as a sheet of paper now; it makes everything seem too bright to look at, so that Emma is forced to squint as she makes her way along the beach, toward the place where Regina and Henry crouch together in the sand. Henry had laid his head on Regina’s shoulder, and Regina–despite her best efforts–hadn’t been able to stem the flow of tears. “Hey,” she says, on a ragged breath, as Emma comes to stand beside them. 

“Hey,” says Emma; it comes out sounding more awkward than she would have liked–stiff, uncertain. “I’m sorry,” she ventures, tentative now. “That I–you know.” Cora’s body rests in Regina and Henry’s shared shadow, implicating her. “It was a lot of pressure to put on you, without any warning. I just thought–ah...I thought if you wanted the option…” 

“I did,” says Regina, with a choked laugh; she can’t quite seem to tear her eyes from Cora’s motionless form, although she’d done her best to shield Henry from the sight. “But that doesn’t make it any less…” 

“I know.” 

Henry grumbles, but agrees to curl up in the sand, eyes averted, as Emma and Regina heave Cora’s body into the ocean. Regina had promised that her body would return to the sea, after a fashion. “Your people turn to dust and bone,” Regina says, wiping trembling hands against the hem of her sundress; red prints bloom in their wake. “Mine turn to foam.” 

“I hope you’re not planning on giving that dress back to Marian,” is Emma’s only reply; she eyes the torn, blood-soaked thing with apprehension. Regina arches a brow–but she does allow Emma to shrug off her sweatshirt, and wrap it around her. 

Which conceals the blood– _ mostly _ . 

When they reach the boardwalk, Emma falters; Henry still grips Regina’s hand tightly, as though determined to protect her from further heartache–or perhaps simply to keep her from being whisked away from him a second time. They look every inch a family, wrapped up in each other’s arms. And Regina (though she would mourn, Emma’s certain, in ways that are hard, and complicated, and ultimately unavoidable) looks more hopeful than Emma had ever seen her before. 

Though Henry still clings to Regina, he watches Emma with narrowed eyes, as if waiting for her to misspeak; in this respect, she thinks wryly, he’s every bit as terrifying as his mother. 

“I just think...I should give the two of you some space,” Emma says, carefully. Regina and Henry regard her with twin looks of scorn; valiantly, she presses on. “I don’t want to intrude–” Henry rolls his eyes, and Emma falls silent, vaguely affronted by the whole affair.  

Regina turns to face her; her eyes are lined, her head bowed–but there’s such warmth in her that Emma can’t fathom that they had first met on what amounted to a battlefield. 

Emma had had more homes than she could count. And still, she’d never known family; when the way the breath caught in her chest, the hopeful hammering of her heart, had plagued her one time too many, she’d learned to abandon her desire to find one.

Or, well–she thought she had. 

“Let’s go home,” Regina says, and at last–they do.

 

* * *

 

It isn’t exactly the ideal time to go to the beach. 

The sun had long since set, and the sky is inky black. They hadn’t dared to start a bonfire; who could say, after all, if its light would draw unwanted attention, even at this hour? Instead, they carry flashlights, so that the seashore is illuminated with thin beams of light–easily extinguished, if need be. That doesn’t eliminate the threat of danger, of course, and there  _ had _ been close calls–drunken teens, stumbling around in the shallows; lovers out for a stroll, peering at them suspiciously from the boardwalk. 

Zelena complains that there’s no  _ point _ in being here when there’s no chance of tanning. She comes anyway, though; they’d spent so many nights here, the six of them, and Zelena had always been among them. She’d snarled when Henry first pointed this out, and rolled her eyes. But she’s here now, as always, sprawled out on a towel, as if maybe she  _ can _ tan after all, and the lack of sunlight is merely an obstacle to be overcome. 

She’s reading–as well as she can manage, anyway, beneath the glare of a flashlight that’s swiftly running out of battery. But Emma doubts she’s paying the words any attention–not with all of them raising a racket in the water, screaming and splashing, even as Mulan scolds and shushes, because, well– _ someone _ has to.  She relents when Marian splashes her, and turns to give gleeful chase. “Oh,” Zelena says, snapping her book shut, “I’m sorry–were we  _ trying _ to get caught?” 

“There’s no one around, Zelena,” Emma says, more sharply than she’d intended. Regina has that look she gets sometimes, when the guilt overwhelms her; it’s on her account that they’re skulking around like this in the first place, planning outings to the beach at a time when ordinary human beings are asleep in their beds.

“Fine.” Zelena shrugs. “If  _ you _ want to explain to the police why my sister is half-fish, be my guest. At the very least it’ll keep me entertained.”  

“And heaven forbid you’re not entertained,” Regina groans, though she’s smiling now. 

Emma is hyper-aware of Regina’s proximity to her, the press of bare shoulders and curling hair against her skin. She shakes her head as if to clear it, and Regina’s smile broadens into a kind of smirk that makes Emma want to curse her, nearly as much as she wants to kiss her.

“At least  _ someone _ has their priorities straight around here,” Zelena says–or  moves to say, anyway. Someone–although it’s hard to determine the culprit–had decided Zelena could do with a soaking. In an instant, Zelena is up and running, sputtering with rage, and the fight begins anew. Before long, she’s sodden like the rest of them, red hair sticking to her cheeks in wet clumps. She seems to have decided Henry was responsible (although Mulan, grinning behind a raised palm, seems the more likely candidate to Emma) and she’s swimming after him, Henry shrieking with laughter when she catches him around the middle and pulls him back into her arms. 

They file out in bursts. Henry is among the last to leave the water behind–he always is; but he falls asleep not long after, curled up on Zelena’s towel, his hair thick with sand and salt from the sea. “Hey,” Regina says, when only the two of them remain. Emma turns, still treading water, to meet her. Regina seems at peace with the sea, as she hadn’t been when they first met; she glows with it, in a way that the others never seem to–can’t, and never will, Emma thinks, and feels so heavy with this... _ something _ that she can hardly breathe with it. 

“Hey,” she says, and Regina softens. 

She always falters when she first leaves the sea, and pearly scales give way to flesh and blood. Emma had asked, once, if it hurt. “No,” Regina  had said, after a moment’s thought, “But it does feel–strange. Disorienting.” And so Emma is beside her when it happens, and tonight is no different. She darts forward, wraps the towel around her torso; Regina rolls her eyes at the children’s characters emblazoned on it, and she scoffs even harder when Emma half-carries her across the sand. “ _ Emma _ ,” she snorts, and Emma grins, and reddens, and doesn’t let go; Regina never asks her to, either. 

They collapse together beside Henry on his towel, a tangle of limbs, beaming and out of breath. “Thank you, Emma,” she says, and won’t meet Emma’s eyes; she pretends to focus on Henry instead, though he’s fast asleep, and she's running her fingers through his hair a little _too_ intently. 

“You’re welcome, your  _ majesty _ ,” Emma says, and it’s warm and teasing until Regina glances up, finally meeting her eyes. Regina skirts the towel, then, on still-wobbling legs, and sinks into the sand behind Emma. Emma leans back against her, eyes closed, and thinks of  _ home _ , heart beating far too fast. Regina presses a kiss to that maddening place just beneath her jaw, then another to the slope of her bare shoulder, so tender that it’s unbearable, and Emma shivers with it. “Regina,” she says, hoarsely, “I think–I…” She swallows, absurdly terrified. 

“I know,” says Regina, the pressure of her lips abating. Emma can hear her smiling. “Me too.” 

Henry pops one eye open. “Ew,” he says. 

“ _Ew_?” Regina repeats, detangling herself from Emma (and Emma tries not to be  _ too _ crestfallen about that). She catches Emma’s eye, brow raised, and Emma nods. They pounce on him together, so abruptly that Henry never sees them coming. His shrieks–first indignant, then gleeful–are muffled beneath them, and soon they’re all so caked with sand Emma can taste it between her teeth. 

Regina's combs through Emma's hair, shaking out the sand that's gathered there; she laughs, and the sound is low and rich, and bright–like nothing Emma had ever imagined possible before now. 

And no, she’d never had a family before. But she thinks, if she did–it might go something like this.   
  



End file.
